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From the Painting by Gustav Rlchter. 
BUILDING THE PYRAMIDS. 
King Khufu and his Queen visiting the architect of the great Pyramid! of 
Dgypt during the progress of the work. These huge monuments of the Pharaobi 
are situated near ancient Memphis, four miles southwest of Cairo. A fabulous 
number of men was employed in erecting them. 



NEW AND COMPLETE 

HISTORY *ip WORLD 

THE STORY OF THE WHOLE HUMAN RACE AND 
ITS VARIOUS NATIONS FROM THE EARLIEST 
DAWN OF CIVILIZATION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 



The rise and fall of Assyria. Egypt, Greece and 
Rome; the Dark Ages and the Revival of Learning; 
England and Modern Europe and the triumphant 
progress of America in the Twentieth Century. 



BY 



FRANCIS T. FUREY, A.M. 

Professor of History, Cahill High School, Philadelph 



la 



AUTHOR OF 



'An Explanation of the Constitution of the United States," and 
other Historical Works. 

HISTORICAL EDITOR OF THE STANDARD AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA. 



M PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED m 

With nearly one hundred full-page half.tone en- 
gravings of pictures by famous artists. 



^) 



^\ 



•F^ ^'h 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Copies Received 

OCT 241906 

CoDyriglit Entry 

CLASS CL XXc, No. 

COPY B. 



&NTERED A.CCORDING TO ACT OF 
.CONGRESS IN THE YEAR 1906 BY 
W . E. SCULL, IN THE 
OFFICE OF THE LIBRARIAN OF 
bONGRESS, AT WASHINGTON, D. C. 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



PREFACE 



The criticism which Professor Bury, the latest and by far the best 
annotator of Gibbon, makes of the author of the "Decline and Fall of th-e 
Roman Empire," to the effect that he had no idea of zvriting history for 
history's sake, is applicable to the vast majority of historians. They have been 
advocates rather than judges. They have made special pleas to the great jury 
of the reading public instead of stating the facts and the bearing of the evidence 
from the bench. Therefore they do not deserve the praise bestowed on that 
Romanised Greek, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, wJw is still admired for the 
judiciousness of his remarks and criticism as well as for the ease of his sty lei 
and the fidelity of his chronology. "He nez^er mentioned anything but what 
was authenticated, and totally disregarded the fabulous traditions which tilt 
and disgrace the pages of both his predecessors and folloivers." A century 
later Tacitus claimed to hafue adopted the same course, but yet was not free 
from prejudice against the imperial form of government. "My purpose," he 
says at the beginning of his "Annals," "is to relate * * ^.without either 
bitterness or partiality, from any motives to which I am far removed." "The 
principal office of history," he tells us elsezvhere, "I fake to be this, to prevent 
virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil zcords and deeds shoidd 
fear an infamous reputation with posterity." History should be what Cicero 
defines it, "the zvitness of tlie times, the torch of truth, the life of memory, the 
teacher of life, the messenger from the past." 

On these lines I have aimed to compile this record of the world's progress, 
from the dim da?wn in the Tigris-Euphrates and Nile valleys to the full noonday 
of tzventieth century development. So as to get the amplest information 
possible between the covers of a single volume, unauthenticated stories Ofid 
disquisitions on mooted points have been discarded so as to leave more roam 
for sketches of the evolution of institutions and the' progress of civilisation. 
It is more interesting and much more useful to know how the various peoples 
lived and zvere governed than to know the gruesome details of hozv armies 
were arrayed against each other and fought. The results of zuars are more 
important than the wars themselves. Therefore, the greater part of the space 
of this volume is dez^oted to institutions, their origin and development, and the 



Preface 

causes of their decay and extinction, or growth and survival For this reason 
the causes of the fall of the Assyrian, Babylonian, Hebrew, Egyptian, Greek 
and Ronton empires are dwelt upon and emphasized. The maritime supremacy 
of Tyre and Carthage did more for human progress than the conquests of 
Cyrus and Alexander. Rome took a long step backwards when it accepted 
Ccesarism in preference to the reforms proposed by the Gracchi and their 
successors. Roman militarism naturally led to the Oriental despotism intro- 
duced and established by Diocletian and Constantine, and therefore it wasi 
that the Roman empire fell a prey to the northern barbarians even more easily, 
if more slowly, than Persian power had crumbled under the blozvs of Alex- 
ander's phalanxes. Then began, under the guidance of Christianity, the 
formation of a neiv Europe which culminated in Charlemagne's empire. But 
in this empire the seeds of feudalism had been sown, and from them grew the 
semi-anarchy of the later Middle Ages. It found its full development in Italy 
and Germany, while elsewhere reaction against it brought absolute fnonarchy 
in France, Spain and England. While England at comparatively little cost 
got rid of this condition in the seventeenth century, at the same period it 
reached its highest development on the continent. Therefore the reaction, 
when it had matured, zuas more violent there and brought on a counter move- 
ment which culminated in Napoleon's tyranny. Meanzvhile real liberty, both 
civil and religious, hod been born on the west side of the Atlantic, and thief 
New World was preparing to teach the old — even England ziras to take lessons 
from its recreant daughter. The nineteenth century, then, has been the greatest 
in civil and political progress as well as in the inventions that have revolution- 
ized industrial life, and the tzmntieth is its child. 

This history describes all these zncissitudes — why the ancient monarchies 
collapsed, hozv the Roman republic became an empire, why that empire fell, 
how the northern barbarians became ciznlized, hozu feudalism arose and what 
it was, hozv it generated absolutism, hozv that absolutism generated the religious 
revolution of the sixteenth century and the political cataclysm of the close of 
the eighteenth, and hozv the work of acquiring freedom has had to be done all 
over again in the nineteenth. Tlte book closes zmth a rezdew of conditions late 
in the summer of ipo6. 






TABLE OF CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

THE THRESHOLD OF HISTORY. 

The Things that Make History — Asiatic and European Civilizations — The Dawn of His- 
tory — Prehistoric Man — The Races of Mankind and Their Languages — The Black 
and the Yellow Races — The White Races (Aryans and Semites) — The First Homes 
of Civilization — The Primitive Books Page 17 

CHAPTER H. 

THE OLDEST HAMITIC AND SEMITIC EMPIRES. 

The Southwestern Dispersion — The Old Chaldean Empire — Cities and Kingdoms of Chaldea 
— Customs of Ancient Chaldea — The Chaldean Religion — The Chaldean Sciences — 
Chaldean Writing — Egypt and the Nile — The Nile's Inundations — The Country's 
Products — Geography and Chronology of Egypt — Beginnings of Egyptian History — 
The First Three Dynasties — The Fourth Dynasty and the Pyramids — End of the Old 
Empire (Fifth to Tenth Dynasties) — Achievements of the Twelfth Dynasty — Domina- 
tion of the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings — Religion of the Ancient Egyptians — Govern- 
ment and Arts of Egypt — Egyptian Writing Page 25 

CHAPTER III. 

FROM ABRAHAM TO MOSES. 

Abraham and the Land of Promise — Divisions of the Holy Land — The Lands Bordering 
on Judea — Climate, Products and Inhabitants — Life under Abraham's Rule — Egypt 
in the Time of the Hebrews — The Countries of Asia at This Time — Phoenician Com- 
merce and Colonies — Egyptian Conquest Under the Eighteenth Dynasty — The Nine- 
teentlv or Ramessian Dynasty — End of the Nineteenth Dynasty — Persecution and 
Exodus of Israel — The Laws of Moses — Phoenicia under Egyptian Domination — Splen- 
dor of Thebes Page 43 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE LATER ANCIENT ASIATIC EMPIRES. 

The Jews in the Land of Promise — The Reigns of David and Solomon — The Rise of Assyria 
-Phoenicia and the Colonies of Tyre — Egypt Under the Twentieth and Twenty-first 
Dynasties — The Twenty-second Dynasty — Egypt in the Ninth and Eighth Centuries 
B. C. — Revival of Assyria — The Second Assyrian Empire — Assyria Under Sargon — 
The Reign of Sennacherib — Assarhaddon and Assurbanipal (Conquest of Egypt) — 
Asia and Eg>pt at Assurbanipal's Death — Phoenicia and the Founding of Carthage — 
The Medes and the Persians — Their Religion (Mazdeism) — The Early Median Kings 
— Fall of Nineveh and Battle of Mageddo — The New Chaldean Empire and the Jews 
— Babylon's Brief Ascendancy — Rise of the Medo-Persian Empire — The Persians in 
Lydia — Description of Babylon — The Fall of Babylon — Cyrus and the Jews — 
The Persian Conquest of Egypt — Darius Hystaspis — Character of Medo-Per- 
sian Rule Page 58 

vii 



viii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 

ANCIENT INDEPENDENT GREECE. 

The Land and the People — The Heroic Age and the Trojan War — The Dorian Invasion — 
Early Political Organization — Private Life of the Greeks — The Religion of the 
Greeks — Sparta and Lycurgus — Athens (Draco and Solon) — The Pisistratidae, Clisthe- 
nes and Themistocles — First Medo- Persian War (Battle of Marathon) — Second Medo- 
Persian War (Salamis and Plataea) — End of the Medo- Persian Wars — The Atheni- 
ans and Pericles — Athens as an Intellectual Center — The Peloponnesian War (First 
Period) — Second Period of the Peloponnesian War Page 82 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE MACEDONIAN ERA. 

Sparta's Predominance — Philip of Macedon Begins the Conquest of Greece — Philip and 
Demosthenes — ^Alexander's Early Triumphs — Destruction of the Persian Empire — 
Close of Alexander's Career — The Age of Alexander — Dismemberment of Alexander's 
Empire — Syria and Egypt — Macedonia and Greece — Greece Becomes a Roman Prov- 
ince — Greece's Services to Civilization — Shortcomings of the Religious and Political 
Spirit of the Greeks Page gi 

CHAPTER VII. 

ROME'S RISE TO GREATNESS. 

Italy and Its Inhabitants — Legends and History of the Beginnings of Rome — ^The Republic 
(Consuls, Tribunes, Decemvirate) — The Laws of the Twelve Tables — All Offices 
Opened to the Plebeians — The Gauls in Rome — The Earlier Samnite Wars — Second 
and Third Italian Anti-Roman Coalitions — The War with Pyrrhus — First Punic 
War and Conquest of Sicily — Second Punic War (First Period) — End of the Second 
Punic War — Third Punic War and Destruction of Carthage — Roman Conquests in 
the East — Conquest of Spain (Viriathus and Numantia) Page no 

CHAPTER VIII. 

CRITICAL PERIOD OF ROMAN HISTORY. 

Conquests Bring Moral and Constitutional Changes — The Gracchi and Their Vain Efforts 
for Reform — Marius and the Conquest of Numidia — Invasion of the Cimbri and the 
Teutones — Renewal of Internal Troubles (Saturninus and Sylla) — Revolt of the 
Allied Italians — Proscriptions in Rome (Sulpicius and Cinna) — Sylla's Proscrip- 
tions and Dictatorship — Close of Sylla's Career (Ruin of the Popular Party) — Sylla's 
War Against Mithridates — Lucullus and Pompey against Mithridates — Revival of 
the Popular Party in Rome — The Gladiators^Pompey and the People — The Pirates' 
War — Cicero and Catiline's Conspiracy Page 125 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE CESAREAN REVOLUTION. 

Caesar Becomes Leader of the Popular Party — Caesar's Consulship — Caesar's Gallic War- 
General Uprising of the Gauls — Crassus Defeated and Slain by the Parthians — Civil 
War between Caesar and Pompey — Alexandrian War — Caesar Dictator — Caesar's Last 
Plans and Death — Second Triumvirate — The Battle of Philippi — Antony in the Orient 
— The Treaty of Misena — The Administration of Octavius — Antony's Expedition 
against the Parthians — Actium — Antony's Death — Egypt a Roman Province — The 
Imperial Power Constituted — Character of the Government and Reign of Augustus — 
Military and Financial Organization— Able Administration of Augustus. . .Page 130 



CONTENTS. ix 

CHAPTER X. 

THE AUGUSTAN EMPIRE. 

External Policy — Defeat of Varus — Beginnings of the Reign of Tiberius — Tiberius the 
Tyrant — Caligula and Claudius — Nero, the Last of the Julians — Civil War (Galba, 
Otho and Vitellius) — The Reign of Vespasian — Titus and Domitian — The Antonines 
(Nerva and Trajan) — The Third of the Antonines — The Reign of Antoninus Pius — 
The Philosopher Emperor — Inglorious End of a Glorious Dynasty — Military Anarchy 
(from Pertinax to Septimius Severus) — From Caracalla to Alexander Severus — Six 
Emperors in Nine Years — Philip, Decius and the Thirty Tyrants — Claudius, Aurelian 
and Tacitus — The Last of the Army's Puppets. Page 155 

CHAPTER XL 

IMPERIAL ROMAN ABSOLUTISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Diocletian and the Tetrachy — New Emperors and Fresh Civil Wars — The Beginnings of 
Christianity — Struggles and Triumph of the Church — The Imperial Administration 
Reorganized — Court Splendor and Its Support — The Heavy Burden of Taxation — The 
Army and the Church — Constantine and His Sons — Julian, Called the Apostate — 
Jovian, Valentinian and Valens — Theodosius the Great — End of the Empire" in the 
West — The Change Page 173 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE WESTERN EMPIRE DIVIDED. 

The Middle Ages Defined — Manners and Religion of the Northern Barbarians — The Coming 
of the Huns to Europe — The Visigothic Invasions — Alaric — The Visigothic, Suevian 
and Vandal Kingdoms — The Hunnic Invasion under Attila — Barbarian Kingdoms of 
Gaul, Spain, Africa and Britain — The Ostrogoths in Italy (Theodoric) — Justinian and 
the Revival of the Eastern Empire — Beginnings of the Franks — Reign and Conquests 
of Clovis — The Age of Fredegunda and Brunhilda — Sluggard Kings and Mavors of 
the Palace Page 187 

CHAPTER XIIL 

THE MOHAMMEDAN AND CAROLINGIAN ERAS. 

Arabia and Mohammed — Character of the Koran — The Khalifate, Arab Conquests, the 
Ommiads — Division of the Khalifate — Arab Civilization — The Two Differing Invasions, 
and Ecclesiastical Society — The Church in the Early Middle Ages — Charles Martel 
and Pepin the Short — Charlemagne King of the Lombards and Patrician of Rome — 
Charlemagne's Conquest of Germany — Charlemagne as Emperor — Government under 
Charlemagne — Learning and Literature under Charlemagne — The Empire's Weakness 
— Louis the Pious — Battle of Fontanet and Treaty of Verdun — Charles the Bald and 
Feudalism — The Last Carolingians Page 200 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE NORTHMEN AND FEUDALISM. 

The Northmen in France — The Northmen in England, the Polar Regions and Russia — 
Ravages by Saracens and Hungarians — Feudalism, or Heredity of Offices and Benefices 
— Duties and Privileges of the Suzerain — Feudal Condition of the Subordinate Classes 
— General Character of Feudalism — The Great Fiefs of France— Great Fiefs of Other 
Countries — Civilization from the Ninth to the Twelfth Centuries — The Beginnings 
of Popular Literature — Old and New Dynasties in Germany — The Saxon Kings — 
The House of Franconia and Hildebrand— Gregory VII and Henry IV— The Con- 
cordat of Worms — The Hohenstaufens (Frederick Barbarossa) — Henry VI and 
Innocent III— Frederick II and the Papacy Page 217 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XV. 

ERA OF THE CRUSADES. 

Condition of the Orient and the Early Capetians — The First Crusade Started on Its Mis- 
sion — How Judea Became a Christian Kingdom — France under Louis the Fat and 
Louis Vn — Second and Third Crusades — France under Philip Augustus — Fourth 
Crusade and Latin Empire of Constantinople — Crusaders in the North (Teutonic 
Knights) — Crusading Wars of the Christians of Spain — The Almohad Moors in 
Spain — Crusade against the Albigenses — France under Louis VHI and Louis IX — 
The Last Crusades in the Orient — Results of the Crusades in the Orient — Urban 
Population of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries — Intellectual Progress — National 
Literatures Page 235 

CHAPTER XVL 

THE LATER MIDDLE AGES IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND. 

The Norman Conquest of England — The Conqueror's Norman Successors — House of 
Plantagenet (Henry II) — Richard, John and Henry III — The First English Parlia- 
ment — France under Philip III and Philip IV — Philip the Fair, Pope Boniface VIII, 
and the T»mplars — The Last Direct Capetians and the Salic Law — Beginnings of the 
Hundred Years' War — The Battles of Crecy and Poitiers — The Jacquerie and the 
Treaty of Bretigny — Charles V and Duguesclin — France under Charles VI (Armagn- 
acs and Burgundians) — Unrest in England (Wycliffe) — Revolution in England, and 
Renewed War with France — Charles VII and Joan of Arc — Reforms and Successes 
of Charles VII Page 253 

CHAPTER XVIL 

MIDDLE AGES IN SOUTHERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE. 

Intestine Quarrels in Spain — Feudalism in Castile and Aragon — The House of Anjou in 
Naples — Italian Republics — Guelphs and Ghibellines — Return of the Papacy to Rome, 
and Italian Principalities — Brilliance of Literature and Art — The German Interregnum 
and the House of Hapsburg — The Emperors Powerless — Scandanavia and Poland — 
Mongols in Russia, and Turks at Constantinople — Character of Mediaeval His- 
tory Page 268 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

MEDIEVAL LITERATURE, ART AND INVENTIONS. 

Dawn of New Tendencies — Marco Polo — Beginnings of Italian Literature — Dante and the 
"Divina Commedia" — Petrarch, Boccaccio and Their Successors — Elements of the 
Renaissance in Art — The First Renaissance (Donatello) — Ghiberti and Brunellesco — 
Great Inventions (Gunpowder) — Beginnings of Artillery and Portable Firearms — 
Navigation in Ancient Times — Beginnings of the Mariner's Compass — The Compass 
Perfected — The First Paper in Europe — The Invention of Printing — Development 
and Diffusion of Printing. Page 280 

CHAPTER XIX. 

THE FIRST PERIOD OF THE MODERN ERA. 

Chief Divisions of Modern History — Louis XI and the League of the Public Weal — Suc- 
cess of Louis's Dangerous Game — Mad Career of Charles the Rash — The Great 
French Fiefs Become Crown Lands — France under the Minority of Charles VIII — 
England under Henry VI — England under Edward IV — Richard III and Henry VII 
— Why the Moors Remained so Long in Spain — Ferdinand and Isabella — Conquest 
of Granada — The Spanish Inquisition and Growth of Royal Power — Ferdinand Regent 



CONTENTS. xi 

and King, and Progress in Portugal — Germany under Frederick III and Maximilian I 
— Political Changes in Milan and Venice — Troubles in Florence — Rome and Naples — 
Strength of the Turks — Mahomet II— Bajazet II and Selim the Ferocious — First 
Modern European Wars — Charles VIII Wins and Loses Naples — Conquest of Milan 
and Naples by Louis XII — League of Cambrai, Holy League, and Failure of 
France Page 295 

CHAPTER XX. 

REVOLUTIONS IN TRADE, CULTURE AND RELIGION. 

Age and Economic Causes of Exploration — The Colonial Empire of the Portuguese — 
First Spanish Explorations in the Atlantic — The Inspiration of Columbus — First Voy- 
age of Columbus — Other Discoveries by Columbus and His Followers — Results of 
These Explorations — The Revival of Letters — Revival of the Arts and Sciences — 
The Demand for Religious Reform — Protests against the Policy of the Popes — The 
Church in Germany — Monks and Humanists — Luther's Early Life — Quarrel about 
Indulgences — Luther Secedes Page 315 

CHAPTER XXL 

FIRST WARS OF AMBITION, RIVALRY AND RELIGION. 

Francis I and Charles V — First Franco-Austrian War — Battle of Pavia and Treaties of 
Madrid and Cambrai — Luther at Worms and Wartburg — Sacramentarians and Ana- 
baptists — The Peasants' War (South Germany Devastated) — Lutheranism Established 
in North Germany — Francis I's Alliances and Soliman's Successes — Confession of 
Augsburg (Melanchthon) — The Schmalkalden League and Anabaptists at Miinster — 
War Renewed between Charles V and Francis I — More Wars of Religion in Ger- 
many — An Aftermath of Personal Rivalry — The Reformation in Scandinavia and 
Switzerland — The Reformation in the Netherlands and France — The Reformation in 
England — Character of the Three Reformed Churches— Consequences of the Ref- 
ormation Page 330 

CHAPTER XXIL 

SECOND PERIOD OF THE WARS OF RELIGION. 

Reforms in Catholic Church Government — The Council of Trent — Strength of the Reju- 
venated Papacy — Dominions of Philip II — Character of This Period — Beginning of 
the Wars of Religion — Catholicism Successful in the Netherlands and France — 
Spain's Scattered Strength — Battle of Lepanto — Events in England, and the St. 
Bartholomew Massacre — Protestant Progress in France and the Netherlands — The 
Netherlands, Spain and England — Spain Worsted — Henry IV, King of France — 
Decline and Ruin of Spain — Prosperity of England and Holland — Preliminaries to 
the Thirty Years' War — The Thirty Years' War (Palatine and Danish Periods) — 
Thirty Years* War (Swedish and French Periods) — The Treaties of Westphalia 
— How the Participants Fared Page .147 

CHAPTER XXIIL 

THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 

The France of Richelieu — Troubles Arising under Mazarin — War of the Fronde and 
Treaty of the Pyrenees— England's Struggle for Political Liberty— The Agitation 
under Charles I— England's Great Civil War— Cromwell and the Commonwealth— 
The Counter-Revolution of 1660 — Organizers of France's Power— The Flanders War 
—The Dutch War— Revocation of the Edict of Nantes— Political and Religious Agi- 
tation in England — James II and the Revolution of 1688 Page 365 



xfi CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

RISE OF ENGLAND, RUSSIA AND PRUSSIA. 

Full Development of Absolutism — Literature and Art in France — Literature and Art in 
Other Countries — The Sciences in the Seventeenth Century — The War of the League 
of Augsburg — France in a Deplorable Plight — War of the Spanish Succession — The 
War in Spain, and Treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt — Russia and Poland at This Epoch 
— Peter the Great and Charles XII — Work and Character of Peter the Great — The 
Rise of Prussia — The Heritage of Louis XIV — On the Eve of Another Great War — 
War of the Austrian Succession — Aggrandizement of Prussia — The Seven Years' 
War Page 380 

CHAPTER XXV. 

BEGINNINGS OF ENGLAND'S COLONIAL EMPIRE. 

England from 1688 to 1763 — English and French Beginnings in India — Early Inhabitants 
and Literature of Hindustan — History of India — The Brahmans and the Caste Sys- 
tem — India Ready for a Change of Masters — France and England at War in India — 
Further Conquests by Dupleix — Dupleix Defeated by Clive and Recalled — France Loses 
India — France in the New World — The Franco-English Conflict in America — The 
English Conquest of Canada — English Maritime Discoveries (Captain Cook) — Cook's 
Last Voyage — French Explorations — England Becomes a Power in India. . .Page 397 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

BIRTH OF THE UNITED STATES. 

State of the Original English Colonies — ^The Founding of Virginia and New England — 
Beginnings of the Other English Colonies — Political Conditions in the Eighteenth 
Century — America's Resistance to the Stamp Act — Period of Constitutional Agitation 
— Separatist Movement and Philadelphia Congress — Franklin and Washington — Dec- 
laration of Independence — First Period of the War of Independence — Saratoga and 
the Policy of France — The French Alliance with the Colonies — England Declares War 
against France — A European Side-issue — War of the Revolution (Second Period) — 
Spain and Holland Join in the War — War of the Revolution (Third Period) — Hos- 
tilities in the Antilles, Europe and India — Treaty of Versailles — The United States 
after the War— The Constitution of 1787 Page 415 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

EUROPE ON THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

Catharine II, Frederick II, and Poland — The Destruction of Poland Completed — Discoveries 
and Literature in the Eighteenth Century — Ideas and Institutions at Odds — Reforms 
Effected by the Governments — Selfishness of the Princes — France under Louis XV 
and Louis XVI — A Bad Administrative Organization — Absence of National Unity — 
Abuses in the Organization of Justice — Abuses in Levying and Collecting Taxes 
— Defects of the Military Organization — Position of the Clergy in French Society — 
Reforms among the Clergy — Conditions among the Nobility — The Third Estate — 
Conditions in the Industrial World — Agriculture, Its Bondage, and Manorial Rights 
— Royal Dues — The Crowning Evil Page 436 

CHAPTER XXVIII. " 

HISTORY'S DEEPEST AND WIDEST GULF. 

Divine Right and National Sovereignty— -Choosing the States General— From States Genera! 
to Constituent Assembly— October Days, Emigration, and Paper Money— The Civil 



CONTENTS. xiii 

Constitution of the Clergy — The Constitution of 1791 — The Legislative Assembly — 
The Revolution Abroad — The First Coalition against France — The Paris Commune 
and Its Massacres — Valmy, the Convention, and the King's Death — The Reign of 
Terror — Self-Destruction of the Terror — Military Campaigns, 1793-1795 — Another 
Constitution — Bonaparte's Opportunity — France under the Directory — Bonaparte's First 
Campaign in Italy — Bonaparte in Egypt — Victory of Zurich — Internal Anarchy and 
Military Revolution Page 454 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

BONAPARTE AS DESPOT OF FRANCE AND OF EUROPE. 

Organization of the Consulate — Reforms Effected by Bonaparte — Battle of Marengo, and 
Treaties of Luneville and Amiens — Bonaparte's Life Consulate — Bonaparte Becomes 
Hereditary Emperor Napoleon I — Third Coalition — Austerlitz and Presburg — The 
Confederation of the Rhine — States in Vassalage to Napoleon — Jena, Tilsitt, and the 
Continental Blockade — Invasion of Spain — Battle of Wagram — Reaction against the 
Napoleonic Spirit — Preparations for Insurrection in Germany — Progress of Liberal 
Ideas in Europe — Formation or Revival of Nationalities — The Invasion of Russia — 
Taking Advantage of Napoleon's Absence — From the Beresina to Elba — The Restora- 
tion, the Hundred Days, Waterloo Page 472 

CHAPTER XXX. 

RECONSTRUCTION AND REACTION AFTER NAPOLEON'S FALL. 

The Congress of Vienna — How the Great Powers Fared — The Confederation of the Rhine — 
How the Other Countries Fared — The Holy Alliance — Why the Work of the Con- 
gress Did not Last — Character of the Period between 1815 and 1830 — Efforts to 
Retain the Old Order — General Dominance of the Privileged Class — Overzealous Par- 
tisans the Worst Enemies — An Attempt to Effect Protestant Union — Liberalism in 
the Press — An Age of Secret Societies — Conspiracies and Assassinations — Revolution 
in Spain and Its Echoes — The Holy Alliance Policing Europe — Repressions in Germany 
and Italy — French Interference in Spain Page 490 

CHAPTER XXXL 

REVOLUTIONS AND LIBERATIONS, 1816-1832. 

Spain Loses Its American Colonies — The Spanish-American Question in Europe — England 
and Portugal — The Revolt of the Greeks — England and Russia in the Near East — 
The Janissaries Destroyed and Russia Successful — Room for Improvement in British 
Affairs — France under Charles X — Condition of the World in 1828 — Dom Miguel in 
Portugal and Don Carlos in Spain — Wellington's Ministry — The Diet of Frankfort — 
Russia under Nicholas I — France under Polignao — The French Revolution of 1830 
— Electoral Reform in England — The Belgian Revolution — Liberalizing Switzerland, 
Denmark and Sweden Page 508 

CHAPTER XXXIL 

EUROPE AND THE EASTERN QUESTION AFTER 1830. 

General Condition of Europe after 1830 — Prussia Advancing to Leadership — Changes in 
the Germanic Confederation — The Revolutionary Ferment in Italy — Poland's Great 
Insurrection — "Peace Reigns at Warsaw" — Revolutions in Spain and Portugal — The 
Carlist Civil War in Spain — Policies and Parties in France — European Interests in 
Asia — The First Eastern Question (Constantinople) — Decline of Turkey and Ambi- 
tion of Egypt's Viceroy— Conquest of Syria and Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi^S^cond 
Syrian War and Treaty of London— The Straits Treaty and France's Istifatidn— 



xiv CONTENTS. 

Second Eastern Question (Russia in Asia)— England and Russia in Indirect Conflict 
—Importance of Herat and Cabul— England's First Afghan War and Later Con- 
quests—Third Eastern Question (the Pacific Ocean)— Isolation of China and Japan— 
The Opium War— France and China Page 524 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE GREAT UPHEAVAL OF 1848. 

A Brief Respite of Peace and Progress— Progress of Socialistic Ideas — Development and 
Diffusion of Socialism— Free Trade and Income Tax in England— England Adopts 
a New Colonial System— Constitutional Rule Established in Prussia — Liberal Agita- 
tions in Austria and Italy — Austria Fails to Grasp Its Opportunity — Why Louis 
Philippe's Throne Tottered — Louis Philippe's Throne Totters and Falls — The Second 
French Republic — Louis Napoleon Becomes President of France — Revolution in 
Austria— The Hungarian Rebellion — The Conquest of Hungary — Failure of the 
Lombard Revolt — The Revolution in Central Italy— Battle of Novara — The French 
in Rome— Prussia and Austria— Rioting at Berlin — The Frankfort Parliament and 
the Duchies Question — End of the Frankfort Parliament — Prussia's Ambition and 
the Zollverein Page 544 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE AGE OF NAPOLEON THE LITTLE. 

Genesis of the Second Empire— Restoration of the Empire— Revival of the Eastern Ques- 
tion — Russia and the Christians in Turkey — War Begun between Turkey and Russia — 
Sinope — France and England Join Turkey — Invasion of the Crimea — Siege of Sebas- 
topol — Balaklava and Inkerman — Death of Nicholas I — The Treaty of Paris — Pied- 
mont's Interest in the War and the Treaty — Characters of Cavour and Napo- 
leon — Austria Driven to War — Italian Campaign (Magenta and Solferino) — The 
Treaty of Villafranca — Other Annexations to Piedmont — The Union of Italy 
Completed Page 566 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

FORMATION OF GERMAN UNITY. 

Germany and Prussia after 1848 — Bismarck's Rise and Character — The Affair of the Duchies 
— Napoleon III Outwitted by Bismarck — Rupture between Austria and Prussia — The 
War of 1866 in Germany — The War in Venetia and the Adriatic — Campaign in 
Bohemia (Sadowa) — The Treaty of Prague — Germany and Austria after 1866— Ger- 
many and France from 1866 until 1870 — Spain Furnishes a Pretext for War — Begin- 
ning of the Franco-Prussian War — The Fighting before Metz Was Invested — The 
Chalons Army and Battle of Sedan — Revolution and Investment of Paris — The Fight- 
ing Around Paris — Fall of Metz and Other Fortified Places — The Army of the 
Loire — Operations in the North and East — Treaty of Frankfort — The New German 
Empire Page 584 

CHAPTER XXXVL 

EASTERN EUROPE AFTER THE CRIMEAN WAR. 

Russia, Its Serfs, and the Poles — Turkey under Abdul Aziz — Rumania and Servia after 
1856 — War in Bosnia, Bulgaria. Servia and Montenegro — The Ottoman Constitution — 
Russia Declares War— The Russo-Turkish War (Early Operations) — Temporary 
Turkish Revival— Closing Period of the War — Treaties of San Stefano and of Ber- 
lin — Rumelia and Bulgaria — Servo-Bulgarian War — Bulgarian Revolution — Armenian 
Massacres— Cretan Insurrection— Turko-Greek War— New Aspects of the Eastern 
Question • Page 605 



CONTENTS. XV 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

ENGLAND AND ITS DEPENDENCIES SINCE 1856. 

Growth of the United Kingdom's National Debt — Extension of British Sway in India — 
The Great Indian Mutiny — Suppression of the East India Company — England's Second 
Afghan War — England Again at War with China — Electoral and Other Reforms 
in England — English Legislation for Ireland — The Irish Land and Home Rule 
Questions — Egypt and the Suez Canal — England's Conquests on the Nile — England 
in South Africa — Cape Colony and the Boers — The Great Zulu and Boer Wars — Rise 
of the Australian Commonwealths Page 619 

CHAPTER XXXVin. 

THE DOMINION OF CANADA. 

French Beginnings in the New World — The Founding of Port Royal and Quebec — Acadia's 
Vicissitudes — The Slow Growth of New France — The Colonial Wars — France Driven 
From North America — Canada and the American Revolution — Creation of the 
Dominion of Canada — The Canadian Constitutions of 1791 and 1840 — The Confedera- 
tion of 1867 — Canada in the War of 1812 — The Papineau Rebellion and Its Outcome — 
Lord Durham and the Struggles for Responsible Government — Development of the 
Northwest — Relations with the United States since our Civil War — Manitoba and 
the School Question — Recent Development of the Dominion — Leaders of Men in 
Canada from Macdonald to Laurier Page 634 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

THE UNITED STATES BEFQRE THE CIVIL WAR. 

Original Political Conditions in the States — The United States in 1801 — The Louisiana 
Purchase and Its Importance — The Lewis and Clark Exploring Expedition — Causes 
of the War of 1812 — Early Incidents of the War of 1812 — The Second Period of 
the War — Close and Results of the War of 1812 — How Florida Was Acquired — 
Acquisition of the Oregon Country — The Annexation of Texas Leads to War — The 
Mexican War's Chief Incidents — Our Troubles with the Barbary States — Vindicating 
Honor in European Waters — Slavery in the United States — Slavery and the Consti- 
tution — Slavery Compromise and Popular Agitation Page 644 

CHAPTER XL. 

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND AFTER. 

The Kansas-Nebraska Act and John Brown — Realignment of Political Parties — Secession 
and Civil War — Fall of Fort Sumter — Secession Completed — Opening Campaigns 
of the Civil War — The Western Campaign of 1862 — The Fighting in the East in 
1862 — Emancipation of the Slaves — The Critical Year of the War (Gettysburg, Vicks- 
burg, Chattanooga) — Closing Period of the War of Secession (from the Wilder- 
ness to Appomattox) — Peace and Reconstruction (Death of Lincoln) — The Money 
Cost of the War — The Alabama Claims — The Purchase of Alaska — The Mexican 
and Minor International Incidents — Cuban Insurrections and the Spanish War — 
Results of the Spanish War — The Philippines Rebellion — The Panama Canal 
and Republic — Venezuela and the Monroe Doctrine — Progress of Our Coun- 
try ( 1865-1906) Page 662 

CHAPTER XLL 

THE LATIN AMERICAN STATES. 

Spam's American Possessions — Causes 6f Revolt in Them — How Mexico Won Its Inde- 



xvi CONTENTS, 

pendence — The Colombian and Argentine Republics — How Paraguay Became a Des- 
potism — Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil — The Chief Later Events in the New 
States — Mexico's Vicissitudes — Central and South America after 1830 — The Para- 
guay War (1864-70) — Wars on the South Pacific Coast (1879-96) — The Pan-American 
Movement (to the Rio Congress, July 23, 1906) — Africa before the Berlin Congress 
of 1884-.S — The Berlin Congress and the Congo Free State — Abyssinia and Italy — 
The French in Madagascar — France in Tunis — Morocco and the Algeciras Con- 
gress ( 1906) Page 682 

CHAPTER XLH. 

FRANCE, RUSSIA, AND THE FAR EAST. 

The Third Republic's First Crisis — Communist Insurrection in Paris — Thier's Presidency 
and Royalist Plots — The Republican Party in Power — Agitations During the Presi- 
dencies of Grevy and Carnot — Boulanger — Panama Scandal — The Dreyfus Conspiracy 
. — The Third Republic and the Church — Religious Orders Suppressed — Separation of 
Church and State — France in Indo-China — Revolution in Japan (1868) — European 
Civilization in Japan — The "Yellow War" — The "Boxer" Rebellion in China — Rus- 
sian Advance in Asia — Russia's Occupation of Manchuria — The Russo-Japanese War 
— Unrest in Russia — St. Petersburg's "Bloody Sunday" — A Year of Turmoil in 
Russia — The Czar Calls a Parliament — Short Life of the Douma — "What Next?" in 
Russia Page 698 

CHAPTER XLIIL 

CIVILIZATION'S GREATEST CENTURY. 

Beginnings of Industrial Revolution — The Steamboat — Its First Voyage on the Hudson — 
Development of Ocean Steamers — George Stephenson and the Locomotive — First 
American Locomotives and Railroads — Development of the Railroad — Harnessing 
the Lightning — Electricity in Industry and Locomotion — Electric Railway — Electric 
Lighting — The Telegraph, from Morse to Marconi — Edison's Inventions — The Sew- 
ing Machine— The Automobile — Labor-Saving Agricultural Implements — Enormous 
Expansion of Productive Activity, Values and Wealth — Present Stage of the Revo- 
lution in Industry - Page 719 



CHAPTER I 



The Threshold of History 



The Things That Make History. — ^When, after a weary climb 
we find ourselves on the summit of a lofty mountain, and look back from 
that commanding altitude over the ground we have traversed, what is it 
that we behold ? 1 he minor details of the scenery, many of which seemed 
large and important to us as we passed, are now lost to view, and we see 
only the great and imposing features of the landscape, the high elevations, 
the town-studded valleys, the deep and winding streams, the broad for- 
ests. It is the same when, from the summit of an age, we gaze back- 
ward over the plain of time. The myriad of petty happenings are lost to 
sight, and we see only the striking events, the critical epochs, the mighty 
crises through which the world has passed. These are the things that 
make true history, and not the daily doings in the king's palace or the 
peasant's hut. What we should seek to observe and store up in our mem- 
ories are the turning points in human events, the great thoughts which 
have ripened into noble deeds, the hands of might which have pushed 
the world forward in its career; not the trifling occurrences which signify 
nothing, the passing actions which have borne no useful fruits in human 
affairs. It is with such turning points, such critical periods in the world's 
development, that this work proposes to deal; not to picture the passing 
bubbles on the stream of time, but to point out the great ships which have 
sailed up that stream, laden deep with a noble life-sustaining freight. 
This is history in its deepest and best aspect, and we have set our camera 
to photograph only the men who have made and the events that constitute 
this true history of the world. 

Our dictionary tells us that history is "a systematic record of past 
events, especially of the events in which man has taken a part"; adding, 
"it recounts events with careful attention to their importance, their mutual 
relations, their causes, and their consequences." And many centuries 
before our dictionary was compiled Cicero defined it as "the witness of 
the times, the torch of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the 
messenger of antiquity." As these definitions may rightly be regarded 

^ 17 



1 8 The Threshold of History 

as too broad for a work of the present volume's scope, let us adopt here 
that of the late Edward A. Freeman: "By history in the highest sense 
we understand the history of those nations which have really influenced 
one another, so that their whole story, from the beginning to our own time, 
forms one tale, of which, if we wholly leave out any part, we cannot rightly 
understand what follows it. Such a history as this," he adds, "is found 
only in the history of the chief nations of Europe and of the countries col- 
onized by them, and of those nations of Asia and Africa which have had 
most to do with them." 

Asiatic and European Civilizations. — It is in Asia we find the 
oldest existing civilizations, namely, those of Hindustan and China; and, 
radically different as European civilization is from them, it was from 
Asia also and from northeastern Africa that it took its beginning. But 
it developed and flourished while its parents decayed and perished. Crushed 
beneath the Juggernaut wheels of Asiatic barbarism, they disappeared 
many centuries ago; but it has grown in vigor and beneficence until it 
now sways the destinies of the entire world. There is, then, a great gap or 
gulf, in many ways wide and deep, between the history of the East, as we 
may vaguely call the history of Asia and Africa, and the history of the 
Western world in Europe and America. Of the many differentiating 
features that might be pointed out, we need adduce only one — the history 
of the East does not give the same political teaching as that of the West; 
it is almost wholly the record of a mere succession of empires and dynasties, 
of despotisms falling one before the shock of another, like a house of cards 
toppling from a mere breath; and it can scarcely be said to be the history 
of the people. It is therefore unnecessary to treat of the history of the 
East beyond its relations to that of the West. For history in the highest 
sense, for the history of man in his highest political and social character, 
for the highest development of art, literature and political freedom, we 
must look to the family of mankind to which we ourselves belong, and 
to those divisions of the world which it has made almost exclusively its 
own. The branch of history which is history in the highest and truest 
sense is the history of the Aryan nations of Europe, and of those who 
have in later times gone forth from among them to carry the arts and 
languages of Europe into other continents. Next to therA in historic im- 
portance come the two Semite peoples through whom the world has re- 
ceived the three reHgions that inculcate belief in a single omnipotent Supreme 
Being. The history of the other families of mankind need be dealt with 
only in so far as the Aryan nations and countries of European civilization 
are brought into relations with them. 



The Threshold of History 19 

The Dawn of History. — Before the invention of writing there is no 
reliable history — there is only legend and tradition. The earliest known 
Chinese book is believed to date from the twelfth century B. C, and the 
oldest writings of the Brahmins of the Ganges valley from the fourteenth. 
To the fifteenth at the farthest belong the Mosaic books of the Old Testa- 
ment, while scholars are still divided by about six centuries, 1700-2300 
B. C, as to the date of the recently discovered laws of Hammurabi, king 
of Babylon, There is even a wider range of divergence regarding the 
oldest Egyptian monuments and inscriptions, as to which the extreme 
views differ by nearly three thousand years. There is like dissent as to 
the time when the first semi-historical king, M'na, Men, or Menes, ascended 
the Egyptian throne, from Mariette's and Lenormant's 5004 to Wilkin- 
son's 2691 B. C. But it is certain that, some three or four thousand years 
before Christ, Egypt and the Egyptians rise up distinctly out of the region 
of mere conjecture. Five or six thousand years ago is no small distance 
through which to look back to the place where the first mountain-peak 
of history appears to view. What was then going on in the unseen regions 
round that mountain .? What was the life of the other peoples of the world 
at that time ? Perhaps in only two places upon the globe there might 
then have been found a civilization at all comparable with that of Egypt, 
namely, the Tigris-Euphrates valley and China. 

Prehistoric Man. — Such are the somewhat obscure beginnings of 
history, and they are recent compared with the length of time that man has 
been upon the earth. How long ago did he make his appearance .? Certain- 
ly not less than eight thousand years before Christ, and probably not 
more than eighteen thousand. This statement does not conflict with the 
Biblical narrative of creation or of the deluge, for in reality there is no 
Bible chronology before the time of Abraham. That which Archbishop 
Usshcr, early in the seventeenth century, compiled for the Authorized 
English or King James version of the Bible is based on a too literal in- 
terpretation of Holy Writ. Unexpected discoveries made within the past 
half century have compelled men to abandon all the old systems of chron- 
ology and to include man himself in the geological evolution of our globe 
but they have not shown that the first man was not the superior being 
Sacred Scripture represents him. No doubt the oldest human remain.? 
that have been found indicate a rude condition of life; but there mighv 
have been deterioration of the race, just as we know there has been in the 
case of certain peoples at all periods of historic times. All that has been 
proven is that man existed long ages before the dawn of history. Stones 
and bones shaped into hatchets, knives, bodkins, and spear- and arrow- 



20 The Threshold of History 

heads; bones of large animals broken lengthwise, because men wanted 
to extract the marrow for food; heaps of sea-shells and of the waste left 
from repasts (kitchen middens); ashes that are evident remains of ante- 
diluvian hearths; even pictures drawn on blade-bones and clay-slates, 
representations of animals now extinct or relegated far from the haunts 
where they then dwelt; and in the last place human remains found certain- 
ly in the deposits of the quaternary epoch, and traces of human industry of 
the earliest part of the same period, all prove that man lived at a time when 
our continents had neither the fauna, nor the flora, nor the climate, nor the 
form which they now present. 

It is in France that the most numerous discoveries of this sort have 
been made. But on the slopes of the Libanus as well as in the caves of Pe- 
rigord, in the Himalaya as well as in the Pyrenees valleys, on the banks 
of the Missouri as well as on those of the Somme, primitive man appears 
with the same weapons, the same customs, the same simple and precarious 
life as is now lived by certain tribes of Africa, AustraHa and the New World. 
This recently acquired knowledge, therefore, makes the creation of man 
recede to an epoch when time is not measured, as now, by a few genera- 
tions of men, but by hundreds of centuries. It brings us back to the stone 
age, itself divided into several periods, each of which is an advancement 
on that preceding. Men began with stones rudely transformed into tools 
or weapons, and used caves as places of refuge; long afterwards they came 
to use stones artistically shaped and poHshed, pottery molded by hand and 
in time ornamented, lake cities or dwellings resting on piles, and at last 
to dolmens, menhirs and covered passages, those alleged druidical monu- 
ments which were supposed for a long time to exist only in France and Eng- 
land, but which have recently been found almost everywhere. When we 
consider that the twenty centuries of the polished-stone age in Europe came 
to an end about four thousand years ago, the date at which the first man 
lived is lost in a vague and awe-inspiring antiquity. 

The Races of Mankind and Their Languages. — The varieties of 
mankind have become innumerable by reason of interminglings of blood 
and of environment of habitation, that is, of soil and of climate. They 
are usually reduced to three chief races, the White, the Yellow, and the 
Black; and with -these we can connect a number of intermediate shades 
due to intermarriages taking place in the borderlands between the three 
dominant races. Though all had a common origin, yet they at least de- 
veloped in distinct regions — the Aryan White or Indo-European or Cau- 
casian on the plateau of Iran or Arya, whence it spread into India, north- 
west?efn Asia and Europe, and th« Semitic and Hamitic White in south- 



The Threshold of History 21 

western Asia and northeastern Africa; the Yellow or Turanian or Mon- 
golian in northern Asia, China, and the Malay peninsulas and islands; 
and the black in Africa and Australia, the latter, however, being regarded 
by certain writers as the remnant of a people antedating the present fauna. 
The Redskins of America seem to be of Mongolian origin. 

Languages are also divided into three great families, the Monosyllab- 
ic, the Agglutinative, and the Inflected. In the idioms of the first group, 
whose chief representative is the Chinese, there are only radicals, at one 
and the same time substantives and verbs, which the voice expresses by a 
single sound, but whose meaning varies according to the place which is as- 
signed to them in the phrase, and the relation in which they stand to the 
other words. In the second case, represented by the Turco-Tatar while 
the radical remains invariable, additions are made to it by the juxtaposition 
of particles that are easily recognized and that answer to all the grammat- 
ical categories; in the third, the Aryan tongues, the root undergoes alter- 
ations that change the sound, the form and the accent, and that express 
gender, number and relation in regard to the substantive, time and mode in 
regard to the verb. Accordingly the inflected languages are the most per- 
fect instrument serving to expound and develop ideas. All the languages 
spoken on our globe, both formerly and at the present time, represent some 
one of these three phases. Those of the white race are the most complete. 
The Turanian idioms, such as Tatar, Turkish, Finnish and Tamul, those 
of the African tribes and of the Indians of the New World belong to the 
second group. The ancient Chinese, by reason of their early acquisition 
of a native literature, stopped at the first, and their descendants are ad- 
vancing but slowly towards the second, while retaining in writing their 
fifty thousand ideographic characters, each of which was originally, like 
the Egyptian hieroglyphics, the image of an object or the conventional 
representation of an idea. 

The Black and the Yellow Races. — History, which records the 
transformation of everything that has lived, has hitherto had no story 
to tell of the black race, whose life has been spent in the impenetrable depths 
of Africa, like those rivers of unknown source that flow on only to be lost 
again in the sands of the desert. We are in no better case regarding the 
American Indians and the tribes of Oceanica, for our science is as yet but 
a small aff'air, being so young. Is it not almost in our own day that it 
has created paleontology or the history of the earth, and comparative phil- 
ology or the history of the primitive languages, races and ideas, and con- 
sequently lifted one of the corners of the veil hiding physical creation and 
the origin of civilization ? 



22 



The Threshold of History 



As regards the black and the red races, the former masters of Africa, 
Oceanica and the New World, there is, then, nothing to inscribe in the book 
of history but the names. The yellow race, on the contrary, claims without 
proof, however, to have the oldest annals in the world, an original civilization, 
and empires that are still in existence; and it probably furnished the first 
human inhabitants to both India and Europe. The Chinese and the 
Mongolians are its best known representatives. But scholars also con- 
nect with it all the peoples of Indo-China the Annamites, included, the 
Thibetans, and the Turkish and Tatar tribes that lead either a wandering 
or a settled Hfe between China and the Caspian Sea. The Huns, Europe's 
Scourge of God in the fifth century of our era, and the Avars, playing an 
almost similar role at a later date, belonged to it, of which also the Finns 
and the Hungarians or Magyars are offshoots. Another branch, the Jap- 
anese, by departing at a bound from the traditions of the race, has but re- 
cently made for itself a new place in history. But, for the reason already 
stated, the Turanians will find mention in this history only when they come 
in contact with Aryan civilization. 

The White Races — Aryans and Semites. — The white race, which 
has performed almost alone the whole work of civilization, is divided into 
two chief branches, namely, the Hamites and Semites in southwestern 
Asia and eastern and northern Africa, and the Aryans or Indo-Europeans 
in the rest of western Asia and in Europe and the countries colonized from 
it. The latter, after having left the second or Noachian cradle of man- 
kind, seem to have taken up their new abode in the region northwest of 
the upper Indus, between the Oxus and the Jaxartes, towards ancient 
Bactriana, now the khanate of Balk in Turkestan. Thence departed 
powerful colonies that arranged themselves in uninterrupted succession 
from the banks of the Ganges to the farthest extremities of the west. The 
relationship between the Hindus, the Persians and the Medes in the East, 
the Pelasgians and the Hellenes in Asia Minor, Greece and Italy, and the 
Celts, Germans and Slavs to the north of the Alps, the Balkans and the 
Black Sea, has been shown with the aid of the languages, from the gram- 
matical analogies and the resemblance of the roots in the essential words. 
Thus Greek and Latin are sister tongues, both derived from the Sanskrit, 
the sacred language of the Indian Brahmins. Celtic, German and Slavic 
likewise show that they were vigorous offshoots from this great stem. 

Before their separation these tribes had already domesticated the 
ox and the horse, which they knew how to train to the yoke, the sheep, the 
goat, the pig and the goose; they had begun to till the soil and to work 
certain metals; and some of them built fixed abodes for themselves. Mar- 



The Threshold of History 23 

riage was with them an act of religion, and the family the foundation of 
all public order. The collection of families formed the tribe, and several 
tribes the people, whose chief, supreme judge during peace, led the warriors 
when it was necessary to fight. They had a vague idea of a First Cause, 
"of a God elevated over all the gods." But this doctrine, too exalted for 
infant peoples, was clouded and hidden by the deification of the forces of 
nature. 

As regards the Semites, settled between the Tigris, the Mediterranean 
and the Red Sea, they had, as far back as we can trace their history, one 
and the same system of languages, which leads us to assigning to them a 
common origin. The Bible, moreover, makes Abraham the ancestor of 
the Arabs as well as of the Hebrews. The Syrians and the Phoenicians 
were of the same blood. Semite colonies settled along the shore of north- 
ern Africa to a point even beyond the Strait of Gilbraltar. And it was in 
this race, the child of the desert, in the bosom of an unchanging and simple 
nature, that the dogma of an only Supreme God was to be preserved in 
all its purity and splendor. 

Thus were formed as it were two great streams of white populations 
that flowed from east to west, starting from the centre of Asia, over the 
western region of that continent, northern Africa and the whole of Europe. 

The First Homes of Civilization. — These men of the ancient ages, 
the first-born of the world, long remained rude and wretched before organ- 
izing into regular societies. When they had at last found regions favored 
with natural fertility, where the quest for the means of subsistence no longer 
absorbed all the strength of body and mind, association became regular. 
The first arts were discovered, the first covenants were entered into, and 
the great work of civilization, which man is never to complete, but which 
he is ever to carry farther, was begun. 

If we study the physical conformation of Asia, we can easily explain 
to ourselves why there were in that region three centres of primitive civili- 
zation, namely, China, India and Babylonia. As the waters that, held 
back for some time in the elevated regions, flow towards the low places 
and form great rivers there, so men descend into the plains sheltered by 
mountains and fertilized by rivers. The Ganges valley, to which the 
Himalayas serve as an impassable barrier, the plain of the Tigris and 
the Euphrates, circumscribed by the mountains of Media, Armenia, Asia 
Minor and Syria, and the fertile regions of the Yang-tse Kiang and the 
Hoang Ho (the Blue and the Yellow Rivers), bounded on the west by the 
Yung Ling and the In Chan mountains, form great natural basins and 
nurseries of flowers and fruits which the hand of God prepared for infant 



24 The Threshold of History 

peoples. Egypt is another example of this civilization blooming on the 
banks of a great river, in a fertile country. 

The Primitive Books.— If from these general facts which science has 
revealed we wish to pass to more precise details, it is necessary to mter- 
roeate books that date back very far into the series of the ages and that 
unhesitatingly recount the creation of the heavens and the earth as well 
as that of man and of animals, the formation of the oldest societies and 
the invention of the first arts. But the examining and comparing ot the 
primitive cosmogonies, religions and legends have shown everywhere but 
in the Bible the creatixe power of the popular imagination in the youth 
of the world. We see that man in his infancy, with the temerity of igno- 
rance, had extended his curiosity over the whole field of nature; that, the 
laws of the physical world being then hidden from him, he had wished to 
explain everything by guess-work; that, in the last place m order to ex- 
plain everything, he had, again Uke the child, transformed into hving per- 
sonages the effects derived from the First Cause, while the Supreme Law- 
giver usually remained veiled to him behind the multiphcity of the phe- 
nomena resulting from His laws. Even in these old books, a close study of 
the idioms, as we follow the order of their historical development, enable 
us to point out interpolations and retouchings of widely separated epochs. 
It has been found necessary, then, sometimes to separate what had been con- 
nected, to bring together what had been separated, and to give a new mean- 
ing to expressions, images and ideas that had been misunderstood. All the 
sacred books of the ancient peoples have been subjected to these certain 
processes of modern science, and this potent work of philological investi- 
gation, whose beginning is but of very recent date, has already thrown on 
L imerrelations of the peoples and the formation of their beliefs a hght 
that on many points is still vacillating, but of which the preceding ages 
could not even have entertained a suspicion. 



CHAPTER II 



The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires 



The Southwestern Dispersion. — After the Deluge, at least three 
thousand years before the time of Abraham, the new cradle of the human race 
was Armenia. 1 hence, at unknown periods, the descendants of the sons of 
Noah dispersed. It is with them, with the white races only that Moses is 
concerned, in the enumeration he makes in the famous chapter of Genesis. 
The names recorded there are now generally regarded as for the most part 
ethnical and geographical, and but to a very small extent personal; and 
none of them belong to the yellow and the black races, of which the Bible 
takes no account, and of whose connection with Noah we are wholly igno- 
rant. 

It seems as if Japhet*s descendants were the first to leave the primitive 
postdiluvian home; and they, as we have seen, migrated eastward, and 
formed a new centre of dispersion in Bactriana. The race of Cham or Ham 
were the next to emigrate. Of these, the ojfFspring of his son Cush followed 
the course of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Some of them took up their 
abode on the plain of Sennaar or Shinar (Sumer or Lower Babylonia) and 
there founded the old Chaldean empire; while some pushed on eastward 
along the coast as far as India, and others westward. The last-named 
peopled southern Arabia, and passed thence to Ethiopia, where their 
descendants still survive in Abyssinians. The ancient Nubians and, accord- 
ing to some writers, the Egyptians, were also of this race. The sons of 
Canaan settled at first on the Persian gulf, but afterwards migrated west- 
ward and peopled the region from the Jordan and the Dead Sea westward 
to the Mediterranean. 

The Chamites were the first to found great empires, but generally 
their civiHzation was gross and their religion abject; and their empires, 
except in Egypt, soon fell a prey to conquerors of another race. The old- 
est known kingdom is that of the Chamite Nimrod (the rebel), "a great 
hunter before the Lord," says the Bible. His capital was Babylon. 
Thence he set out towards the north, invaded the lands inhabited by the 
Semites descended from Assur, and there founded a sort of colony, with Nin- 
eveh as its stronghold. 

25 



26 The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires 

The Semites were the last of these emigrants from Armenia. Assur 
settled a little farther south on the Tigris, and his name survives m Assyria. 
The Elamites, following the left bank of the same river, occupied the plains 
and mountains of Susiana, bordering Chaldea on the east. Aram, ances- 
tor of the Aramaeans, peopled Syria, and perhaps also Phoenicia. In the 
last place, Arphaxed, head of the Biblical patriarchal branch, the deposi- 
tory of the Divine promises, descended along the course of the Euphrates. 
He settled, probably in the time ofNimrod, in southwestern Chaldea, where 
his descendants lived as nomads and shepherds side by side with those of 
Cush. 

The Old Chaldean Empire— The two oldest empires of which we 
have any certain knowledge are those of Chaldea and of Egypt, both 
founded by descendants of Cham. It is impossible to come nearer than 
at least a thousand years to determining the date of their origm. Native 
tradition gives it a fabulous antiquity; but all that can be said is that tour 
thousand years before Christ there were complete civilizations on the banks 
of the Nile and of the Euphrates— everything else is conjecture. 1 he 
Chaldean empire seems to be the older. It was formed in the southern 
part of the Tigris-Euphrates valley. . , , • • . 

These two rivers have their sources in the Armenian mountains at a 

comparatively short distance from each other, and flow first through the 

highlands in opposite directions. The Euphrates seems mchned to empty 

info the Mediterranean. But, on coming within less than a hundred miles 

of that sea, it turns abruptly towards the southeast and, along with the 

mountains on the north and the Tigris on the east forms a vast triangle of 

plains which is called Mesopotamia (between the rivers). Beyond the 

Euphrates to the west is the Syrian desert; beyond the Tigris to the east 

is a region of mountains and valleys comprising Assyria in the north and, 

east of it, Media; on the south, Elam or Susiana and, southeast of the 

latter, the original Persia, which is only a small portion of the modern 

empire of the same name. The two rivers run parallel for some distance, 

only thirty miles apart, then diverge and enclose a vast oval plain, which 

is Chaldea They now pour their waters into the Persian Gulf through a 

single channel, the Shat-el-Arab; but of old their mouths were distinct 

from each other and formed a vast delta. Impetuous in its upper course, 

the Euphrates then widens to over a hundred yards, becomes sluggish, has 

scarcely any affluents, and is bordered by marshes. It is really a river ot 

mud and sand. The Tigris, one-third shorter, is also deeper, carries more 

water and flows more rapidly, and it is constantly fed by tributaries, tor 

the most part on the left bank. 



The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires 27 

Like the Nile, these two rivers have their regular inundations, which 
occur after the snows melt in April; but the waters soon return to their 
beds, leaving everywhere fever-producing marshes and pools of a black mud 
that dries and cracks in the sun. The country is now a desert; one meets 
there only robber Bedouins or poor Arabs living in reed huts. It has been 
in such condition only since the Turkish occupation. But of old the soil 
was so fertile that Herodotus wrote of it: "I will not say how tall the 
millet and sesame stalks grow; for no one would believe me. "Even to- 
day one need only scratch the surface of the marshes with a stick and throw 
in a little barley; as soon as the leaves appear, a flock is let loose upon 
them to brouse on the excess of vegetation. Then the soil is left to itself. 
Four months later the harvest is gathered, and a single grain has produced 
thirty or forty ears. Formerly, when a complicated network of canals 
skilfully distributed the water through the country, this fertility had pro- 
digious results. And Chaldea was also covered with magnificent pasture 
lands and palm trees. The palm was the great stand-by of the inhabitants. 
A Persian song enumerated as many as three hundred and sixty ways of 
utilizing it. The palm furnished a sort of wine and of vinegar, flour, 
honey, sugar, twine and beams. The date kernels served to feed the 
forge. It is to those regions we are indebted for wheat; and it still grows 
wild there. 

Cities and Kingdoms of Chaldea. — In the remote period of the tower 
of Babel Chaldea was strewn with cities. By excavating certain mounds 
isolated in the plains, half a score of them have been discovered, with their 
palaces and temples built of crude bricks and adorned with statues and 
inscriptions. Each had its god and its prince. They were independent; but 
frequently the ambition of some one of their kings, or of the neighboring 
peoples, Elamites, Cosseans, etc., united them for a time into a single em- 
pire. The chief cities were: Agade, where, about 3800 B.C., reigned 
Sargon I, the Elder, who tells in his inscriptions how he had been exposed 
by his mother in a willow basket smeared with pitch, abandoned on the 
river, and saved by the "chief of the waters." He was a conqueror; for a 
little while he held Chaldea in subjection, and led expeditions into Syria. 
His son, Naram-Sin, reigned about 3750. Uruk, "the city of the books," 
where Sargon had stored his library of works on magic, grammars and 
treatises on astronomy, written on bricks. Mutilated copies of them have 
been found at Nineveh, in the library of Assurbanipal. One of these 
books contained a very old poem on the Deluge. Eridu, a city of schools 
and a holy city, governed by a priest king or "Patesi." Sirtella, explored 
in 1878 by M. de Sarzec, who unveiled there a temple of dried bricks all 



28 The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires 

marked in the name of King Gudae, along with beautiful hard black stone 
statues, decapitated, but showing an art already well advanced. Ur, the 
birthplace of Abraham, where the god Sin (the moon) was adored. Nippur, 
the results of the exploration of which under the direction of an American 
commission are still being investigated; and Babil or Babylon. 

Some time between the seventeenth and the twenty-third century 
B. C, King H-ammurabi raised Babylon to greatness and ruled over all 
Chaldea. He built or rebuilt temples, fortresses "high as mountains, 
and especially dikes to control the inundations. "The gods," he says in 
an inscription, ^'have given me to rule the peoples of Sumer and Akkad 
(lower and upper Chaldea). "They have filled my hand with their tnb- 
utes I have had Hammurabi's canal dug, the blessing of the Babylon- 
ians. It waters the lands of Sumer and Akkad; I have turned its second- 
ary branches into the desert plains; they empty into the dried canals, 
and furnish inexhaustible waters. I have redivided the inhabitants into 
villages, I have transformed the desert into fertile plains, I have given fer- 
tility and abundance, I have made Chaldea a sojourn of happiness." His 
recently discovered and published code of laws shows an advancement of 
civiUzation that it must have taken many centuries to develop. 

Customs of Ancient Chaldea.— The Chaldeans were especially 
peaceful and laborious tillers of the soil. Some of them hved on fish dried 
in the sun, crushed, kneaded, and cooked in an oven. They raised large 
droves of bullocks and flocks of sheep, and they had sod houses, low and 
dark, to protect them from the heat. They carried on commerce. Gudea 
had a fleet that went afar, even to Egypt, in search of stone for his statues 
All along the Euphrates there went down round boats, whose prow and 
stern were undistinguishable, made of skins stretched over w How branches 
The river being too rapid to permit of its being ascended, after arnval 
the float was dismounted and carried up again on a donkey s back. 1 his 
commerce consisted of fine linen and woolen stufl?'s, embroidered in bright 
colors, implements of war from Damascus, luxurious furmture encrusted 
with gold and ivory, saddles, harness, carpets, jewels, etc. Babylon was 
for a long time the great mart of the East. ^ 

The wealthy Chaldeans wore a long linen robe reaching down to the 
feet, and over it a woolen tunic and a small embroidered white cloak 
Their long hair fell in frizzed ringlets over their shoulders. Their beard 
was carefully platted. They were covered with collars, bracelets and ear 
pendants. For head-dress they wore a small cap, the mitre. In war they 
had a pointed helmet, a sheet-iron breastplate, and a shield. Their weapons 
of attack were the club, the lance, and rf short sword. Their government 




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The Oldest Hamltic and Semitic Empires 29 

was monarchical, and every city was independent. The population was 
divided into trade corporations, such as weavers, exchange-brokers, wheat 
dealers, gardeners, etc. Fishermen were held in least respect. The 
priests and the magistrates formed a sort of caste, that of the Chaldeans 
properly so called. Slaves were numerous. Loans were made at six per 
cent a month, and the insolvent debtor lost his liberty. 

The Chaldean Religion. — The Chaldeans retained sorrc remnants 
of the primitive traditions. In their own way they gave an account of the 
Creation and the Deluge. They seem to have also held on to the notion of a 
Supreme God, Ilu, to whom they raised no temple, and who had created 
the other gods. These were innumerable. Each city had its own; but 
the priests tried to bring a little order into this chaos, and the divinities were 
grouped in triads. At the head of the divine hierarchy were Anu, god of 
the heavenly world; Bel, organizer of the world and father of the gods; 
Ea, in later times called Oannes, the fish god, the god of intelHgence, the 
revealer of civilization. Their three wives formed a second triad, Anat, 
Belit and Davkina. Their three sons made up the third; Bin, god of the 
atmosphere; Sin, god of the moon, honored at Ur; Samas, god of the sun, 
worshipped at Sippara. All these divinities had a claim to a certain amount 
of honor from men, represented by figures varying from 60 for Anat to 10 
for Bin. Below them were the planetary divinities; Adar (Saturn), Mero- 
dach or Marduk (Jupiter), the special god of Babylon, Nergal (Mars), god 
of Catha, Istar (Venus), goddess of Nineveh and Arbela, and Nebo (Mer- 
cury). Genii served these great gods. They had the form of a man, with 
four large wings, or again of a winged bull, having a man's or an eagle's 
head and a lion's tail. The world was also infested with demons setting 
snares, ghosts, and vampires of hideous looks, to which all accidents were 
attributed and which were driven away by means of talismans and magic 
formulas. The Chaldeans were famous in antiquity as magicians and 
soothsayers. 

The Chaldean Sciences. — In the ancient world the Chaldeans were 
the first to observe the stars, to distinguish the planets, and to class the 
fixed stars by constellations. The twelve stars in whose environment the 
sun successively rises formed the zodiac. The Chaldeans calcu'ated the 
movements of the planets and the eclipses of the moon. They invented the 
solar quadrant. They are therefore the founders of astronomy. But, 
unfortunately, they mingled with this science extravagant and superstitious 
ideas. They believed that on the position of a planet in the heavens at the 
time of a child's birth, or at the time of a public or private event, depended 



30 The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires 

the future of that child, or the success of that undertaking. Every man had 
his own "star," good or bad, under whose influence he remained all his 
life. That is astrology. To them the planets were the interpreters of the 
gods. From the study of the heavens they pretended to predict not only 
winds, rains, and good and bad harvests, but also wars, pestilences, victor- 
ies, and the death of kings. 

To them also men were indebted for the weights and measures that 
were used by nearly all the peoples of antiquity. They had retained the 
traditional week, but they consecrated each day of it to a planet. They di- 
vided the day into twenty-four hours, the hour into sixty minutes, and the 
minute into sixty seconds. They had calculated the solar year, made up of 
three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days; but in practice they used 
the shorter lunar year, consisting of twelve months, some of twenty-nine 
and the others of thirty days. Every six years they added a complementary 
month of thirty days to compensate for the diff^erence. To them also we 
owe the division of the circle into three hundred and sixty degrees, the de- 
gree into sixty minutes, etc. The unit of length was the cubit or ell. Near- 
ly all the ancient peoples adopted it, but with slight changes here and there. 

Chaldean Writing. — The writing of the ancient Chaldeans, Hkeall 
the primitive systems of writing, was at first hieroglyphic. Like our re- 
buses, each sign represented the object spoken of (an eye, a mountain, 
the sun, etc.) or its symbol (an eight-branched star signified a god; a 
bee, a king.) Then the plan was simpUfied. Instead of the object it- 
self, they had only conventional characters more or less Hke the original 
design. Traced on a soft clay brick with a flat triangular-ended stamp, 
these characters presented a compUcated collection of little elongated 
triangles, arrows and angles, wedge-shaped, whence the name Cuneiform 
writing. Later on these signs came to represent syllables, and this was 
the classic writing of the Chaldeans and Assyrians. One and the same 
sign might have several difi'erent values. There were syllabaries in ex- 
istence, that it was necessary to consult incessantly. Fully half of the cune- 
iform remains which we have, consist of these directories. In the last place 
this writing was adopted by the Persians, who simplified it very much and 
made out of it an alphabet of about forty letters. 

These writings remained undecipherable for a long time. To read 
them, aid was derived from inscriptions, drawn up in three languages, 
copied at Persepolis. The German C. Niebuhr saw (1765) that they con- 
tained three different systems of writing, and that one of them, in which 
the same signs frequently recurred, must be alphabetical. Another scholar 
afterwards supposed that one of the other two systems was syllabic, in 



The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires 31 

which he was right; and the third, hieroglyphic, in which he was wrong. 
In 1802 the Hanoverian Grotefend succeeded in deciphering two proper 
names. He took two brief inscriptions, almost identical, of the Persepolis 
palace, and reasoned himself into the conclusion that they must be old 
Persian, a language already known from other sources. After much toil- 
some work he found that they referred to Darius, son of Hystaspes, and 
Xerxes, son of Darius. But the work of deciphering the Persian inscrip- 
tions was not completed until thirty-five years later. The Frenchman, E. 
Burnouf and the German, Lassen succeeded in fixing the alphabet. When 
the Persian part of the trilingual inscriptions had been mastered, and 
especially the gigantic Behistun inscription, the deciphering of the other 
two could be undertaken. It was supposed that the contents were identical 
and that the proper names must occupy analagous positions. It was at 
last discovered that these proper names were always preceded by a vertical 
nail. Thus the investigators succeeded in determining a large number 
of syllabic signs. Enormous labor was necessary to reach satisfactory 
results. It was a question not only of reading, but of restoring, unknown 
languages. The Englishman, Sir Henry Rawlinson and the Frenchmen, 
Oppert and F. Lenormant cleared up the Assyrian documents. Others 
read the hymns and exorcisms of the old Chaldeans with the aid of ancient 
Assyrian translations. There were also Median, Susian, Elamite and 
other texts to be dealt with. The difficulty was so much the greater as one 
and the same sign might answer to several sounds, and as these signs were 
numberless. Now this new science is fixed and is called Assyriology. 

Egypt and the Nile. — Of a portion of Egypt Herodotus says: "It 
is a gift of the Nile." This might be said of the whole of Egypt, for without 
that river's periodical inundations the desert would cover everything not 
hidden under the waters. Egypt consists only of the two strips of land, hav- 
ing an average width of about six miles, that lie along the lower course of 
the river. Beyond the cliffs called the "Arabian chain" to the east, and 
the "Lybian chain" to the west, lies the desert. 

Men were long in ignorance of where the Nile took its source, though 
it has quite recently been found to be not far from where the Greek his- 
torian placed it, in the region of Africa's great lakes that extends south 
of the equator. Nero sent out explorers, but they were unable to pass be- 
yond the immense equatorial fens. It was only in 1858 that, after the Eng- 
lishman, Speke, had discovered Lake Victoria Nyanza, the problem could 
at all be regarded as solved. From that time to the present (1906) the river 
has been traced so far as to make it probably the longest in the world. On 
leaving Nyanza the Nile, for over six hundred miles, serves as an outlet 



32 The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires 

for other great lakes, and passes through and drains a spongy region of 
rivers and swamps. Its chief affluent" is the Bahr-el-Ghazal. For six hun- 
dred miles more, it runs along the Alp-like masses of Abyssinia that fur- 
nish it with great tributaries, the Bahr-el-Asrak or Blue Nile at Khartum, 
and the Atbara at Berber. Beyond this point the Nile is in the dry zone, 
and receives only intermittent torrents. It flows through ancient Ethiopia 
in the form of a large S. Its smooth course is interrupted by about twenty 
rapids or cataracts. Near the tropic of Cancer, at Syene, it enters Egypt 
properly so called, where its course is about seven hundred and twenty 
miles. At one time it emptied into the Mediterranean at the foot of the 
Pyramids hill. Gradually the alluvial deposits filled up the gulf and out 
of it formed the vast plain of the Delta, where the mouths of the Nile spread 
out like a fan. Of the seven that were there in ancient times, there now 
remain only two that are important, that of Damietta to the east (formerly 
the Bucolic branch), and that of Rosetta to the west (formerly the Balbi- 
tine branch). 

The Nile*s Inundations. — It is the regular inundations of the Nile 
that make Egypt's prosperity. Accordingly it was adored as the "creator 
of wheat and producer of barley," the work on which was rest to the fingers 
for millions of unfortunates. If it failed to give its average supply of water, 
the gods of heaven fell on their faces, and men perished. If it rose, the 
earth rejoiced. It created everything that was good; it was the lord of 
pleasing nutriments. Everything, the seasons, the festivals, and all kinds 
of work in town and in the fields, depended and still depend on the Nile 
floods. During May and June the "Khamsin," a warm wind, blows from 
the desert loaded with sand and dries up everything. The trees are covered 
with dust, and the soil becomes hard as a brick and cracks; the air is stifling 
and sleep is difficult. The Nile, reduced to half its width, seems to slum- 
ber in marshes amid banks of mud, baked and rebaked in the sun. At last 
the wind shifts to the north, sweeps the dust from the trees, and somewhat 
freshens the atmosphere. Early in June the Cairo "Nilometer" shows a 
slight rise. A little later there comes a green wave, slimy and unhealthful. 
The winter rains have swollen the stagnating Equatorial waters and made 
them overflow. The Nile has had to traverse those immense fens, encum- 
bered with drift in a state of putrefaction; whence issues that green flood 
which, happily, lasts no more than three or four days. For some time the 
swell is almost imperceptible; but about the middle of July the torrential 
rains of Ethiopia precipitate into the Nile the red slime-laden waters of the 
Atbara and the Bahr-el-Asrak. After the "green Nile" comes the "red 
Nile." The river has the appearance of flowing blood; but this water is 



The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires S3 

wholesome and agreeable. In the opening days of August the river reaches 
half its height, seventeen cubits. Then the dikes are cut and the water 
spreads through the whole valley. A complete system of canals permits 
of its being so directed that no one is deprived of benefit from the inunda- 
tion. Everything is in festive state, both man and nature, according as the 
flood advances, carrying in its waves myriads of fishes. Life seems to as- 
sume a new existence; the air is full of birds, the ground swarms with 
insects. The villages built on the mounds are soon only islands connected 
with one another by narrow roads. In the beginning of October, the rise 
is at its height and the waters then recede slowly and regularly, leaving 
behind them a layer of black slime. At once men hasten to sow in the still 
wet soil wheat, barley, sorgho, beans, lentils and chick-peas. By the end of 
December the river has returned to its bed. Egypt looks like a vast verdant 
prairie. The cereals sown in November are harvested in April and May. 
The year, then, is divided into three seasons, namely, the Nili or inundation, 
from June to October; the sowing and growing time, from November to 
February; and the time of harvesting and drought, from March to the 
beginning of June. 

The Country's Products. — Egypt, if we take into account only the 
habitable part, is a small country of about eighteen thousand square miles. 
It has a population of about ten millions, to support which the Nile must 
be depended on. Of old the soil was so fertile in the Delta that a slight 
scratching of the surface with a wooden plough sufficed; the seed was then 
sown, pigs were driven in to trample it, and, says Herodotus, ''nothing further 
need be done but wait. " The peasant's life was hard, however, for he had to 
keep up the dikes and look after the canals. Now a "fellah" spends a day 
at removing a cubic yard of mud. It was further necessary, when the inunda- 
tion had receded, to dig wells so as to reach the sheet of subterranean water 
fed by the river's infiltrations, and to sprinkle with the full energy of one's 
arms. 

Egypt produced so much wheat that it was a granary from which later 
on, Rome derived its supply. The paintings in the tombs show the Egyp- 
tians cutting wheat with the sickle, pulling millet, and gathering and press- 
ing grapes. Others are hunting clouds of birds in the swamps; ducks, 
ibises, cranes and herons are flying from the papyrus thickets; a tame 
goose serves as a decoy, and a trained cat brings back the birds which the 
hunter has brought down with his boomerang. They are also seen hunting 
with the net, and fishing in the marshes with a long double-pointed harpoon. 
Egypt knew no other forests than those of palms. On the monuments we 
also see pictures of the fig, the pomegranate, the apricot and the sycamore 



34 The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires 

trees. The two plants most frequently represented are the papyrus, which 
grows especially in the Delta, and from which a sort of pasteboard was 
made, as well as shoes for the priests, and hunting boats; and the lotus, a 
flower of Upper Egypt, a sort of water-lily, red, white or blue, whose seed 
was used in making pastry. Pasturages were abundant; the ox, the goat, 
and a superb breed of ass were raised on them. 

Geography and Chronology of Egypt. — Egypt was divided into two 
parts, Lower Egypt, whose capital was Memphis, and Upper Egypt, with 
Thebes as its capital. Farther south was lower Ethiopia or Nubia, which, 
when conquered by Egypt, was called the viceroyalty of Kush. 

The history of Egypt recounts twenty-six dynasties before it was con- 
quered by Persia. They are usually divided into three great periods: i. 
The Old Empire, ten dynasties, during which Memphis is most frequently 
the capital. These centuries prior to 2200 B. C, — how many we know 
not, — were ages of peace, when Egyptian civilization reached its highest 
point, and when the country had to defend itself only against the nomadic 
tribes, northeast and south. 2, The Middle Empire, from the eleventh 
to the seventeenth dynasties (2200-1600 B. C). Now the centre is Thebes. 
In its early period Egypt is still tranquil and prosperous; but to its latter 
part is assigned the domination of the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings (fifteenth 
and sixteenth dynasties). 3, The New Empire begins with a series of con- 
quests (eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth dynasties — 1600-1100 B. C), 
After this Egypt is invaded from all sides by the "Peoples of the Sea," the 
Assyrians and the Ethiopians; and at last, under the twenty-sixth dynasty 
the country again has a brief period of glory, after which, relapsing into 
servitude, it passes from the Persians to the Greeks, and from the Greeks 
to the Romans. It is impossible to say how long each of these periods ac- 
tually lasted. There are as many opinions as there are writers on the sub- 
ject, and the dates they give vary by several centuries. To the Old Empire, 
for example, Bceckh assigns 2240 years, Mariette 2940, and Lepsius 1469. 
According to the same scholars, the Middle Empire lasted 1807, 1361 and 
832 years; and the New 976, 1038 and 906 years. 

Beginnings of Egyptian History. — The Egyptians pretended that 
their country had been the cradle of the human race. For eighteen years 
the gods and heroes had reigned. Osiris had suppressed cannibalism. To 
him man was indebted for the cultivation of the grapevine, and to Isis for that 
of cereals. It was the golden age. So far, however, is this from being true 
that we are certain Egypt was not the country in which civilization had its 
birth. According to Genesis, the Egyptians were descended from Cham 



The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires 35 

through Mizraim, which makes them practically one people with the Cush- 
ites and the Canaanites. The first human visitors found a valley whose most 
potent inhabitants had hitherto been the hippopotamus and the crocodile. 
It was marshy here and there, and barren where the inundation did not 
reach. Men succeeded gradually in diking and controlling the river. 
Those who thus fertilized the soil received divine honors later on and, 
under the name of "servants of Horus," in reward, it is supposed, in the 
other world they cultivated the "happy fields." 

Egypt was then divided into about forty petty States independent of 
one another, called "nomes" by the Greeks, each having some old sanc- 
tuary as its centre, like that of Osiris at Abydos, or of Amon Ra at Thebes, 
and governed by priests. Nearly all these cities dated back to a very remote 
antiquity. Each had its own divinity and emblem. There were the city 
of the cow, of the harpoon, of the jackal, of the sycamore, of the crocodile, of 
the ox-rump, etc. According to a tradition, the first to unite all Egypt under 
his sceptre and to reduce the chiefs of the nomes to being only as it were 
feudal lords, was a prince of Tini named Menes. He founded the city of 
Memphis and made it his capital. By means of a colossal dike which re- 
mains to the present day, he regulated the course of the Nile, and forced 
it to flow in the centre of the valley. As he had extended his power over 
the priests, the latter told that he had been killed by a hippopotamus, a 
fate which did not prevent his being adored by the people as a god. 

The First Three Dynasties. — Of this period we know very little. 
Mention is made of kings who were writers, physicians, lawgivers. One of 
them built the great palace of Memphis, another the step pyramids of 
Saqqarah, and still another compiled a treatise on anatomy. A King Kakeu 
set up the worship of the ox Apis at Memphis and that of the he-goat atMen- 
des, and merited the title "bull of bulls." Another declared women fit to 
assume the crown in default of male heirs. Egyptian art had come into ex- 
istence a long time before. Perhaps the oldest work it has left is a co- 
lossus, the great Sphinx. This is a crouching image of a fantastic animal 
with a lion's body and a human head that was supposed to exist in the 
desert and that was dedicated to the sun. Now sunk to the shoulders in 
sand, it formerly stood twenty yards above ground. It was cut out of the 
solid rock in the Libyan chain and painted red. It looks towards the east 
and seems to be watching for the rising sun. 

History really begins only with Snefru, the last king of the third dynas- 
ty. The Egyptians of the Delta had to defend themselves against the 
incursions of Asiatic robbers. Snefru closed the passage of the isthmus 
with a line of fortresses. The Sinai peninsula had already been colonized. 



36 The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires 

From the granite and porphyry rocks of Mount Serbal copper, iron and tur- 
quoises were extracted. One may still see the mining galleries, the masses 
of dross, the remains of furnaces, and the embankments raised on the edge 
of terraces to collect the rain water and make the cultivation of small fields 
possible. But the barbarians disturbed the workmen. Snefru had to inter- 
fere, and on a rock he engraved the narrative of his exploits. This is the 
oldest of the royal inscriptions of Egypt. He is represented as holding 
by the hair a victim who is beseeching him, and whom he is crushing with 
his club. 

The Fourth Dynasty and the Pyramids. — Under the fourth dynasty 
Egypt reached a high degree of prosperity that was maintained until the 
sixth. New cities were founded, temples were multiplied. Never was sculp- 
ture to be more lifelike and more expressive. For architecture the richest 
materials were used, such as marble, alabaster and red granite. But the 
preeminent work of this epoch is that of the tombs. It was the fashion with 
the rich and the kings to have sumptuous burial places erected for themselves 
during their lifetime. The great necropolis of Memphis arose a league west 
of the city, on a small plateau on the rim of the Libyan chain. The tombs, 
nearly all pyramidal in shape, were aligned there in perfect order. At pres- 
ent we know of about sixty of them. Three of the pyramids look down upon 
the others, namely, those of Kheops, Kephrem and Mykherinos. The first 
of these reaches a height of 444 feet, and when intact was twenty-five feet 
higher. Herodotus tells us that, in order to finish this gigantic work, it 
became necessary to impose task labor on the Egyptians; that one hundred 
thousand men labored on it at one and the same time; and that they were 
relieved every three months. It took ten years to build the road along 
which the stones were carried, and ten more to raise the tomb. Funereal 
halls were arranged in the centre. The royal mummy having been placed in 
its granite sarcophagus, the chamber was closed up with enormous blocks 
and the corridor leading to it was filled. Then the whole outside surface 
was covered with polished granite slabs so perfectly adjusted that one could 
not insert a hair between them. This granite came from the Syene quarries, 
over four hundred miles away. Now the covering has disappeared and 
the sides look like a stairway. On one of the sides was inscribed what the 
work had cost; merely for the vegetables consumed by the workmen the 
amount was six thousand six hundred silver talents (almost seven and a 
half millions of dollars). "The hatred with which Kheops and Kephrem 
had inspired the Egyptians by thus condemning them to forced labor is said 
to have been such," we are told by Herodotus, "that no one wished even to 
mention their names." 



.s? 



p <» Q 



IS 

O 0_ 




The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires 37 

End of the Old Empire — Fifth to Tenth Dynasties.— Six more 
dynasties succeeded; but gradually the political centre seems inclined to 
move from Memphis up towards the south. One after another, chief of 
nomes sought to confiscate the sovereign power. The sixth dynasty came 
from Elephantine, in the extreme south. It furnished the first of the great 
Egyptian conquerors, Pepi E It multiplied the monuments, regained 
possession of Sinai, which had been lost for a time, and subdued Ethiopia. 
Another famous member of this dynasty was a queen, Nitocris, whom 
Manetho calls "the Rose-cheeked Beauty." To avenge the murder of 
her brother, she invited the culprits to a feast in a subterranean gallery into 
which she suddenly had the waters of the Nile turned. A very interesting 
inscription tells us of the life of Una, prime minister to Pepi E He had 
begun by being a mere "crown-bearer" or page. Entrusted with going 
to the quarries to choose the limestone block destined for the royal sar- 
cophagus, he carried out his mission with such zeal that he was made over- 
seer of the "prophets of the funereal pyramid" and "royal friend." He 
recruited an army for the southern and eastern expeditions. "The army 
went in peace," he says; "it made a breach in the fortifications, it cut down 
the fig-trees and the vines, destroyed the wheat-fields, and carried off a large 
number of living prisoners." As a reward for his victories, Una received 
the distinguished favor of always keeping his sandals on in the king's pres- 
ence. 

From Elephantine royalty returned to Memphis (seventh and eighth 
dynasties), and was then transferred to Heracleopolis (ninth and tenth dynas- 
ties). This whole period is very obscure. We do not know whether the 
seventh dynasty had seventy kings in as many days or five kings in seventy- 
five years; or whether the eighth dynasty lasted one hundred or a hundred 
and forty-six years. All we can conjecture is, that between the old and the 
Middle Empires, several centuries of anarchy intervened. The monuments 
of this period are rare, and consequently history is silent. In this interval 
great calamities must have befallen the land. When light reappears we 
find royalty relegated to the Thebaid; but thence it emerges gloriously with 
the kings of the twelfth dynasty, who restored its natural frontiers to Egypt 
and began the great struggle against the Ethiopians. With the eleventh 
many changes had come, among them the names of the kings, the titles of 
the office-holders, and the system of writing. But the arts seem to have 
scarcely emerged from their infancy. The gods of the south, Osiris of Aby- 
dos and Amon of Thebes, take the place of Ptah of Memphis and Ra of Heli- 
opolis. The twelfth dynasty marks the apogee of this period. Its kings 
all of whom are named either Amenemhat or Usortesen, were warriors and 
engineers. They covered Egypt with monuments and made it one-third 



38 The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires 

larger. They were perhaps the greatest of the Pharaohs, or those of them 
at least who gave their country most prosperity at smallest cost. 

Achievements of the Twelfth Dynasty. — Its founder, Amenemhat I, 
had first to make his way against competitors. Once he was firmly seated 
on the throne, he strove to repair the evils of civil war. *' I have, " he says 
in his instructions to his son, " made him who was weeping put off his mourn- 
ing; men no longer witness perpetual battles. I have had the country 
worked as far as Abu (Nubia), I have introduced three sorts of grains. — 
There are none hungry in my kingdom, none thirsty, for everyone obeyed 
me, and everything I ordered was accepted lovingly. " He subdued and shut 
out the eastern Shasu or "pillagers," drove the Ethiopians farther south, 
and reopened gold mines formerly worked by the Elephantine kings. He 
and nearly all the princes of his dynasty chose their own successors, and thus, 
like the Roman Antonines of a much later period, secured internal peace 
for his realm. His son, Usortesen I, at least equaled him in every respect, 
so that his people loved him more than themselves, and took more pride in 
him than in a god. He extended the southern frontier, but coveted no addi- 
tional territory in the north. His two successors completed the conquest 
of Ethiopia and fixed the boundary at Semneh, on the second cataract. It 
long remained the southern gate of Egypt. Fortresses, somewhat like the 
feudal castles of the Middle Ages, adorned the crests of the cliffs, on both 
sides of the river. On the banks, inscriptions on stone posts forbade the 
negroes to cross the frontiers in boats except to bring their cattle. Monu- 
ments of the thirteenth dynasty have been found farther south, showing 
that later on the frontiers of Egypt were extended farther. 

These kings were also engineers. Usortesen I diked the west bank of 
the river, which suffered most from the floods. Amenemhat HI, to provide 
against the years of drought, resolved to construct a reservoir capable of 
furnishing water to Lower Egypt. A few leagues north of Memphis the 
Lybian chain is cut by a gorge leading to a broad circular valley, theFayoum. 
This valley he surrounded with dikes from forty to fifty yards wide and 
higher than the highest inundations. This reservoir, the Mceris or the 
"lake," had an area of sixty square miles. It communicated with the Nile 
through two channels supplied with sluices, the one to bring the water 
from the river and fill the lake, the other to distribute it over Egypt. Another 
channel discharged the surplus into lakes situated farther on in the desert. 
In the centre two seated colossi, representing the king and the queen, over- 
looked the waters. As if the better to enjoy his work, he had a palace 
built for himself at the mouth of the Moeris, the Lope-ro-hunt, the Laby- 
rinth of the Greeks, meaning "temple at the lake entrance." According 



The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires 39 

to Herodotus, it was a greater wonder than the pyramids, and they were be- 
yond their renown. It had twelve roofed courtyards. The rooms were 
double, some of them underground. There were three thousand of them. 
It is said the lower ones contained the tombs of the kings who built the 
palace and the sacred crocodiles. Those above, with their marble ceilings, 
were incomparable. There the articles used in worship were preserved, 
sheltered from dust, sun and insects. 

Domination of the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings.— If we are to give 
any credence to the Hsts of the kings, there must have been one hundred and 
thirty-five of them in the thirteenth and fourteenth dynasties during a 
period of nine hundred and thirty-seven years. All that we know of them 
is that, while the Theban kings were extending their empire towards the 
south, the cities of the Delta had not forgotten their past greatness. One 
of them, Xois, was strong enough to found the fourteenth dynasty, but not 
strong enough to resist foreign invasion. Under this dynasty Egypt was 
probably a prey to civil wars. Bands of Asiatic pillagers took advantage 
of this condition to invade and ravage the country. These nomads, whose 
origin is uncertain, but probably Semitic, rushed down on the Nile valley 
Hke a swarm of locusts, massacred the inhabitants or reduced them to slav- 
ery, destroyed the crops, burned the towns, and razed the temples. Upper 
Egypt was able to resist them; an indigenous fifteenth dynasty held out at 
Thebes. But the invaders, once the first exhilaration of conquest had 
passed, became an organized body; their first king, Shalit, settled at Mem- 
phis, and began another fifteenth dynasty, followed by the sixteenth and the 
seventeenth. So as to prevent their Asiatic brethren from coming and 
disturbing them in their conquest, they established near the isthmus the 
great intrenched camp of Avaris, which held a garrison of two hundred and 
forty thousand men. Gradually they became civilized, and adopted the 
customs, language, religion and arts of the vanquished. They built temples 
and erected statues. Their favorite city was Tanis. We know nothing 
about their history and the disturbances from which Egypt suffered during ' 
their domination. It is believed they succeeded in subduing even the 
Thebaid. But it is certain that, for the second time, Egyptian civilization 
underwent an eclipse — the salutary work of the twelfth dynasty was over- 
thrown. Nor can we say how long their domination lasted; four hundred 
years according to Lenormant, while Manetho makes it five hundred, 
Maspero six hundred, and others nine hundred, but perhaps it was much 
less. After having been repeatedly defeated by the kings of Thebes, the 
Hyksos were gradually driven back to the walls of Avaris. King Amosis 
even succeeded in driving them thence, about 1600 B. C, and the bulk of the 



40 The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires . 

nation then left Egypt. Yet, in the neighborhood of Lake Menzaleh, men 
are to be found with robust members and angular features who seem to be 
descended from them. It is curious to note that the Hebrews, to whom, 
about 1800 B. C, they had allotted the land of Goshen or Gessen, between 
the upper Delta and the isthmus, were not disturbed at the time of this 
revolution. Perhaps is was because they were industrially too useful to the 
country. The subsequent history of Egypt belongs to another chapter. 

Religion of the Ancient Egyptians. — There were two religions 
in Egypt, as, moreover, was then the case in every country, namely, the 
religion of the people and that of the priests. The former, gross and ma- 
terial, regarded certain animals, such as the ichneumon, the ibis, the crocodile, 
the hippopotamus, the cat, the ox, etc., as divine beings. This was the old 
African fetichism, relieved, however, by a few theological ideas, as is at- 
tested by those gods with a dog's or a hawk's head and by the worship of the 
bull Apis "begotten by a lightning flash." The latter sought to account for 
the great phenomena of nature, and explained good and evil, vv^hich are met 
with everywhere by the opposition of the two principles, Osiris, the repre- 
sentative of all beneficent influences, and Typhon, the god of night and of 
gloomy days. It seems even to have taught at first belief in an only God 
who had had no beginning and was never to have an end; and the care 
taken by the Egyptians for the preservation of corpses proves that they 
had hope in a life to come. The inscriptions mention even many rebirths, 
reminding us of the metempsychosis of the Hindus. But this idea of the ab- 
solute eternal Being was veiled from the eyes of the people and of the priests 
by the conception of a divine triad — Osiris or the sun, the principle of all 
life; Isis, or nature; and Horus, their divine child. Once they had aban- 
doned pure monotheism, the Egyptians glided rapidly down the slope 
of polytheism, and the representations on the monuments and in the relig- 
ious rites of a number of secondary divinities made them forget the chief 
God, whose attributes the latter had at first only symbolized. 

Government and Arts of Egypt. — The government was a monarchy 
so much the stronger as the kings, in the common belief, participated in the 
divinity. All are " sons of the Sun, " and, for this reason, they were the heads 
of religion as well as of society. Society had neither priestly nor aris- 
tocratic caste, nor a united people organized to balance the king. At last 
a certain number of non-hereditary classes came to be established, but in 
them the son generally remained in the condition ot the father. Herodotus 
enumerates seven of them— priests, warriors, laborers, shepherds, merchants, 
mariners and, from the time of Psammetik, interpreters. No doubt there 



The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires 41 

were many others. We read in Diodorus Siculus that perjury there en- 
tailed the death penalty; that he who did not aid a man attacked by an 
assassin was Hable to the same penalty; and that the calumniator was 
punished. Every Egyptian had to file with the magistrate a written docu- 
ment stating his means of livelihood, and there was a severe penalty for 
false declarations. The spy who gave State secrets to the enemy had his 
tongue cut out, and counterfeiters had both hands amputated. In no 
account were the interests due to exceed the capital; the debtor's property 
answered for his debt, his person did not. An Egyptian might borrow 
by giving his father's mummy as security, and he who did not pay iiis debt 
was deprived of family burial. 

The Egyptians successfully cultivated a multitude of industrial arts 
and mechanics, geometry and astronomy." In painting they used bright 
colors which time has not dimmed; some of their beautiful statues might 
be set up in rivalry with those of Greece, were it not for a certain stiffness 
which betrays a religious art that was lacking in freedom; but their ar- 
chitecture is unrivaled in imposing aspect and grandeur, as in the temples 
of Thebes, the Karnak hall, where the roof is supported by one hundred and 
forty gigantic columns several of which are seventy feet high by eleven 
in diameter, and the pyramids, one of which, nearly five hundred feet high, 
is the most formidable pile of stone-work built by man; take in testimony 
also their obelisks, their catacombs, the labyrinth, the sphynx, measuring 
twenty-six feet from the chin to the top of the head, and Lake Mceris, the 
dikes, the roads, and the canals for holding or carrying the waters of the 
Nile. No people in antiquity moved so much earth and granite. 

Egyptian Writing. — The Egyptians used three forms of writing, the 
Hieroglyphic, the Hieratic, and the Demotic. For a long time the word 
hieroglyphic had been synonymous with undecipherable. Bonaparte's 
expedition to Egypt, and the publications of a commission of scholars who 
had accompanied the army, attracted men's attention to the old civilization 
of that country. It was then (1799) that an officer found at Rosetta the 
famous inscription that was to serve as the key to deciphering all the others. 
It dates from the reign of Ptolemy V and is written in three forms, hiero- 
glyphic, demotic and Greek. It is now in the British Museum. The 
Greek text enabled Silvestre de Sacy to make out part of the demotic 
alphabet (1802). From 1814 to 1818 the Englishman Thomas Young 
deciphered the names Ptolemaios and Berenice and five hieroglyphs. It 
was Champollion (called "le Jeune" or "the Younger," to distinguish 
him from his brother, Champollion-Figeac) who reaped the glory of finding 
the key to all Egyptian writing. He started with the hypothesis that the 



42 The Oldest Hamitic and Semitic Empires 

Coptic language, still spoken on the banks of the Nile, was a derivative 
of the old indigenous tongue. Then he supposed that the hieroglyphics 
did not necessarily, like our rebuses, represent ideas, but that they were 
real letters corresponding with sounds. The Rosetta inscription, and 
another written in both Greek and Egyptian, found at Philae, furnished 
him with several proper names. The ring around them separated them 
from the rest of the inscription, and the Greek translation gave their value. 
Comparing the two words Kleopatra and Ptolemaios, he found five 
common letters and as many common hieroglyphs. The words Alexandros 
and Berenike furnished him with other elements. Thus he soon had 
nineteen letters. A little later he proved that there were three sorts of 
hieroglyphs, one of them (ideograms) signifying the very object they repre- 
sent or its symbol, others syllables, and others letters. The alphabet 
properly so called showed twenty-two articulations, each having one or 
several signs. It was usually the initial letter of the name of the object 
represented. Thus an eagle signified A, because the word for "eagle" 
is ahom; an owl (muladj), M; a mouth (ro), R, etc. The syllabic signs 
were mingled with the alphabetical letters in a single phrase or a single 
word; the ideograms summed up a word in a single sign. Most frequently 
they were not pronounced, but, added to a word, they determined in what 
category of ideas the object in question must be put. Thus the sign repre- 
senting a crouching man raising his hand to his mouth followed the words 
expressing the idea of mouth, eating, drinking, calling, speaking, and also 
that of judging, knowing, meditating. An arm wielding a bludgeon would 
give the general idea of strength; legs in walking posture, that of motion; 
hairs, that of head of hair, sadness, mourning, etc. The total number of 
hieroglyphs exceeds three thousand. 

This system of writing was too complicated to remain in current use. 
It was used especially for inscriptions on stone and wood. When it was 
necessary to write with the calamus, or the pencil, on the papyrus rolls, an 
abbreviated writing was used that retained only the chief features of the 
hieroglyphics. This was called hieratic writing. Later on it was still 
further simplified, and thus became the demotic. From among the hieratic 
characters the Phoenicians chose twenty-two letters, consonants and breath- 
ings; and it is from this collection that are derived, directly or indirectly, 
nearly all the known alphabets. 



CHAPTER III 



From Abraham to Moses 



Abraham and the Land of Promise. — While the Egyptian and the 
Chaldean empires were rising and decaying, God's chosen family, as heir of 
the Messianic promises, was Hving on the banks of the Euphrates, in danger 
of being perverted by contact with idolatry. Abraham, son of Thare, was 
born at Ur (now Mugheir, "Bituminated, ") a flourishing city in which the 
moon was adored under the name of Sin. Then God ordered Abraham 
to leave his own country and his kindred and go into a land which He 
would show him. He and his family departed from amid idolatry, taking 
with them numerous flocks, went up along the right bank of the Euphrates, 
and reached Charan or Haran, bordering on upper Mesopotamia, six 
hundred miles distant from Ur, where Thare died. Here he received a 
splendid promise: He would be the father of a great people, would be 
blessed, and all the peoples of the earth would be blessed through him. 
Abraham believed in God's promise, though he was then seventy-five 
years old and had yet no son. Resuming his journey, he went down into 
the land of Canaan. When he reached Sichem, God foretold him that 
that land would one day belong to his race. These events occurred about 
the year 2100 B.C., and here Bible chronology begins. 

The region which God thus promised to one branch of Abraham's 
descendants is known by various names. It was the land of Canaan until 
conquered by Josue; then, the land of the Hebrews; that of the Jews, or 
Judea; and again, Palestine, from the Philistines; and now, as the scene 
of Jesus' mission and death, the Holy Land. It is not much larger than 
the combined area of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. It 
is divided into two parts by the Ghor, a long volcanic cleft extending from 
the Libanus to the Red Sea. The northern portion of this depression is 
the valley of the Jordan. Its deepest space, eight hundred yards below 
the level of the Mediterranean, is occupied by the Dead Sea. This is a 
lake thirty-five miles long and ten broad at its widest part. Its water is the 
heaviest known. It has a saline, bitter, oily taste. A Roman emperor 
had chained slaves thrown into it, but they could not sink. It is difficult 

43 



44 From Abraham to Moses 

to swim in it, as the feet cannot get below the surface. Fishes carried 
down by the Jordan perish as soon as they reach its v.ater. Inn' 
enormous masses of pitch, detached from the bottom, were tt' be - 
floating on its surface. 1 he Httle river Jordan, ninety miles long, has 
three sources on Mount Hermon. At marshy Lake Merom it alrr.( s 
reaches the level of the Mediterranean. Thence between two basalt clifis 
it sinks into the Lake of Genezarath, which is nearly two hundred yards 
below sea level. When, after a winding course, it empties into the Dead 
Sea, the depression is twice as low. The valley is very narrow, and is 
bordered on right and left by peaked mountains. The temperature there 
is that of the tropics. 

Divisions of the Holy Land. — ^To the west of the Ghor lies Palestine 
properly so called, which in the time of Jesus Christ comprised Galilee, 
Samaria and Judea. Galilee is separated from the Libanus by the Leontes 
river. It is a labyrinth of elevated verdant valleys, rich in pasturage, and 
a veritable orchard of fig, pomegranate, nut and apple trees. Its highest 
summit, the Djebel Djarmuk, does not exceed twelve hundred yards. The 
plain of Esdrelon, which extends from the sea towards the Jordan, separates 
Galilee from Samaria. If properly cultivated, it would be extremely 
fertile in cereals — thistles there grow taller than m.en. It is famous especi- 
ally for having been in all ages the battlefield on which the empire of the 
Orient was disputed. Egyptians and Assyrians, Jews and Canaanites, 
Saracens and Crusaders, French and Turks fought each other there; and 
the Cison torrent which drains it bears to-day the name of Water of Mas- 
sacre. To the north rises Mount Tabor (over six hundred yards); to the 
south the hills of Gelboe, the outposts of the mountains of Samaria and 
Judea. A rocky range borders the plain from southeast to northwest; it 
does not reach six hundred yards, but is covered, especially on the south 
side, with woods, vines and fruit trees that have won for it the name Carmel 
or "orchard," and made it become to the Hebrews the symbol of beauty 
and fertility. 

Samaria and Judea extend from the Cison torrent to the Egyptian 
desert. At two-thirds of the distance separating the Mediterranean from 
the Jordan, runs a ridge of mountains whose slopes on the east sink abruptly, 
rent by torrents and cascades, and on the west in stony terraces, bristhng 
with chalky rocks, hollowed with caves, and intersected with narrow water- 
less ravines. On the rounded hills are the villages, masses of small white 
cubical houses. Two roads traverse the country from south to north, the 
one following the shore plains and the other the crest of the mountains, 
whose mean height is from six hundred and fifty to eight hundred and 



O 





From the Painting by J. Staellert. 
THE LAST OF THE GLADIATORS. 
An Kastern monk in Rome, Almachus, was murdered by the Roman populace 
in 404 AD fof trying to separate the combatants in the arena Not long 
afterwards, however, the Emperor Honorius issued an imperial edict prohibiting 
such combkts which sacrificed human life to the pleasure of the people. 



From Abraham to Moses 45 

seventy yards. The chief summits are Ebal and Garizim, the former a 
thousand yards high and the latter about eighty less, overlooking the small 
plain of Sichem; the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem, and the heights of 
Hebron (about a thousand yards). The most important of the torrents of 
Judea is the Cedron, which flows past Jerusalem. 

The Lands Bordering on Judea. — On the other side of the Jordan 
extends a vast plateau, nearly a thousand yards above sea level and deeply 
ravined by the Hieromax, Jaboc and Arnon torrents and their affluents. 
It is overlooked from the northeast by the volcanic mountains of Basan 
(over nineteen hundred yards high), now the Hauran, formerly famous for 
their pasturages. The oaks and bulls of Basan were legendary. Galaad, 
which borders the Jordan on the east, was also a famous pasture land. 
Farther south, east of the Dead Sea, is the country of Moab and Ammon, 
a mountainous region, cut up by penetrating valleys, "like narrow streets 
between vertical walls," says Reclus. The most famous summit here is 
Mount Nebo. 

Southern Palestine was bounded on the west by the Mediterranean, 
with which it communicated only through the poor harbor of Joppe. This 
whole shore is inhospitable. North of Carmel began Phoenicia, which 
occupied all the seaports and isolated Galilee. It is a strip of coast lands, 
thirty miles wide at the most, and, from Carmel to Arad, one hundred and 
eighty miles long, made up of ravines and narrow valleys that run down 
from the Libanus and here and there cut out natural harbors. Wheat, 
grapevines and oHve trees grow there in abundance. It was a densely 
populated country, and every valley, isolated from the others, formed a 
small world by itself, having its seaport as its only outlet. Communication 
was had by sea, as the coast road consisted most frequently of steep paths 
and stepways cut out of the rock. Beyond arose the Libanus, the "white 
mountain," so called because of its snows. Cedar forests, that have now 
almost disappeared, long covered its slopes. Parallel with it, the Antili- 
banus stretches for a shorter distance, but is more rugged, and ends at the 
south with the mass of the Hermon. Between the two is a splendid valley 
Ccelesyria (hollow Syria). It is drained by the Orontes and the Leontes, 
both of which carry their waters to the Mediterranean, the one northward 
near Antioch, the other to the south, near Tyre. There was built later on the 
famous city of Baalbek. On going down the eastern slopes of the Antili- 
banus, we find ourselves in Syria of Damascus, admirably fertile plains, 
veritable gardens refreshed with spring waters, that flow on to be lost in 
great swamps. Beyond, as far as the Euphrates, stretches the desert. 

South of the Dead Sea and Judea we find Idumea, a region of sterility 



46 From Abraham to Moses 

reaches the gulf of Akabah and the Sinai peninsula. Another desert sepa- 
rates Palestine from Egypt. 

Climate, Products, and Inhabitants. — In many respects Palestine 
was superior to Egypt. To fertilize their fields, the farmers needed only 
to turn upon them through small drains the water from the innumerable 
springs. In average years they had in addition abundant rains, which be- 
gan in October and lasted until April or later. Earlier and later rains as- 
sured superabundance. They might fall short, just like the inundation of 
the Nile, and then there was famine. The soil originally stony, had been 
cleared by the old inhabitants, laid out in terraces, into which the water 
penetrated deeply and which were upheld by stone walls. There were 
numerous vast plains, fertile in cereals. Several centuries before the 
Hebrews had taken possession of the Promised Land, an Egyptian traveler 
wrote of it: "Wine is to be found there in greater quantity than water, 
honey abounds, the palm and other trees give their fruit there; it is a land 
of wheat and barley; cattle are innumerable there." It was literally a 
land streaming with honey. There were innumerable swarms of bees, 
and the honey sometimes flowed from the trees to the ground. The vines 
were magnificent; clusters of grapes may still be found there weighing over 
ten pounds, which one man could not carry far without spoihng them. 
The eastern part was especially rich in pasturage. West of the Jordan more 
attention was paid to agriculture. The most fertile part was the deeply 
enclosed Jordan valley. Of old there were veritable palm forests there — 
over eleven thousand acres of them at Jericho alone. The balsam tree was 
cultivated. The shores of the lake of Genezareth were planted with every 
species of trees — palm, fig, nut, rose laurel, etc. But this wealth and fertil- 
ity disappeared on account of the absurd administration of the Mussulmans. 
At present, from fear of the Turkish treasury agents and the pillaging 
Bedouins, the peasant sows only enough to keep him alive. 

In the time of the patriarchs Palestine was occupied by the descend- 
ants of Canaan. About the twenty-fourth century B. C, they had left the 
Persian Gulf and invaded southern Syria. Some, the Hittites or Khatti, 
went farther north, occupied the Orontes valley, and there founded a vast 
empire that included nearly all of Asia Minor. Their chief cities were 
Kadesh on the Orontes and Carchemish on the Euphrates. They had a 
rather advanced civilization, and a hieroglyphic writing that no one has yet 
succeeded in deciphering. They were especially warriors. A third group 
inhabited Palestine. In Abraham's time they were divided into small 
independent kingdoms. Living in cities, they cultivated only the neighbor- 
ing fields and let the nomads of another race wander in the neglected pastur- 



From Abraham to Moses 47 

ages. They were all alike in the abominations of their morals and their 
religion. They adored the stars, and especially the sun and moon under 
the names Baal and Astaroth. These gods, they believed, resided in tree 
trunks, stakes, cone-shaped stones, rocks and aerolites. They wished to 
be honored on the tops of hills ("the high places") or in the depths of 
forests. They demanded human sacrifices, and occasionally, in times of 
public danger, selected victims were served up to them. Then the first- 
born of the best famiHes were laid on the idols' knees, on the outstretched 
arms of the god Moloch, or in a brazen ox, and there burned alive. The 
parents were present, unmoved and clad as if for a feast, while the blare 
of trumpets drowned the victims' voices. Very often the god was satisfied 
with seeing his priests cut up their own bodies with knives. It was these 
and other abominations that afterwards led to the extermination of the 
Canaanites by the Jews. 

At the southern end of the Dead Sea was a confederation of five cit- 
ies, among them being Sodom and Gomorrah, whose inhabitants, ad- 
dicted to the most infamous vices, merited being punished long before 
the others. 

To the southwest of Canaan there already dwelt a colony that had 
come probably from the island of Crete. It was that of the Philistines, a 
race of warriors and pirates, which in Moses' time must have been in- 
creased by fresh immigrants. It then consisted of a confederation of five 
cities, Gaza, Ashod, Ascalon, Ekron and Geth, and was to the Israelites 
a cause of considerable uneasiness. 

Life under Abraham's Rule.— Abraham led a nomadic career in 
the land of Canaan. His wealth consisted wholly of flocks of sheep and 
goats and droves of camels. When the pasturage of one region had been 
exhausted, the baggage was loaded on camels' backs and carried else- 
where. The patriarch was followed by his wives, the multitude of his 
servants and his children. He lived under a tent, fed on milk and flesh, 
and wore a large cloak of bright colors. The women were covered with 
jewelry; they had bracelets on their wrists, and a gold ring hanging from 
the nose. Frequently violent discussions arose between the bands of 
shepherds regarding wells, which belonged to the first occupant. Spite 
was taken out by filhng up those of an enemy. As nomads they lived 
apart from the surrounding civihzations, having intercourse only with 
the ambulant traders, Egyptians or Phoenicians, who, in exchange for 
wools, furnished jewels, garments, paint and perfumes. The patriarch 
was king, military leader, judge and priest. It was he who offered the 
sacrifices. When he died, the child whom he had blessed inherited all 



48 From Abraham to Moses 

his rights and received a double share of the heritage. But, above all, 
he became the ancestor of the Messiah; accordingly God made the dying 
patriarch's blessing fall on His own choice, and not necessarily on the 
eldest son. The patriarchs and their families beHeved in an only God, 
Creator of heaven and earth, and sovereign Master and Dispenser of re- 
v^ards. They believed in the immortality of the soul; to them death was 
being gathered to one's fathers. They observed the sabbath. In short, 
their morality was pure — ^woman was respected; it was not forgotten that 
she was a mother, and as such had her rights. The slave was protected. 
The members of a family were closely united, and believed they were 
obliged to avenge violence offered to their brethren. 

A famine compelled Abraham to take refuge in Egypt. This must 
have been in the time of the fourteenth dynasty or in the early part of the 
Hyksos domination. He returned thence very rich; his flocks had so 
multiplied that it became necessary for him to separate from his nephew, 
Lot, who chose the fertile plains in the neighborhood of Sodom, Abraham 
withdrawing into Canaan. In those times there was strife, lasting several 
centuries, between Chaldea and Elam, and the latter had now the upper 
hand. The victor often extended his sway into Syria. In Abraham's 
time Kudur Lagamar, the Elamite king, exacted tribute from the Dead 
Sea cities. They revolted, after a twelve years' submission. He, accom- 
panied by three allied Chaldean kings, came once more, defeated the 
Canaanites in the Siddim valley, and pillaged the whole country. He 
then went towards the north, bringing with him as prisoners Lot, his family, 
and his flocks. On hearing of this, Abraham gathered a band of three 
hundred and eighteen men, pursued the Elamites, and on a dark night 
took them by surprise and routed them near Damascus. He recovered 
his relatives and the booty. It was on his return that he met Melchisedech, 
king of Salem (probably Jerusalem). Except that, through his son Ishmael, 
he was the ancestor of the Arabians as well as of the Jews through Isaac, 
the rest of his story belongs to sacred history. 

Egypt in the Time of the Hebrews. — Of Isaac's two sons the elder, 
Esau or Edom, was the progenitor of the Idumeans, and Jacob, also called 
Israel, of God's chosen people his twelve sons being the founders of the 
Twelve Tribes. How, through one of the youngest of them, Joseph, the 
Hebrews came to settle in the land of Goshen or Gessen, in Egypt, told 
in the closing chapters of the book of Genesis, is one of the most interesting 
narratives of the Old Testament. We do not know the name of the Pharaoh 
under whom Joseph rose from the condition of a slave to the position of 
prime minister; but he was of the Hyksos race, and reigned about 1800 
B.C. 



From Abraham to Moses 49 

During the four centuries and more of the Israelites' sojourn in the 
land east of the lower Nile, Egypt reached its highest degree of prosper- 
ity. It conquered Asia from Sinai to the Euphrates. It was then also that 
the Phoenician kingdoms were organized, and that the obscure foundations 
of that of Assyria were laid. 

The Shepherd Kings settled at Tanis had as vassals or tributaries 
the nomes of Lower and Middle Egypt; but the princes of Thebes seem to 
have remained almost independent. War between them and the invaders 
at last broke out, and continued, it is said, for a century and a half. Grad- 
ually were the Hyksos driven back towards the north, brought to a stand 
in the Delta, and shut up in their citadel of Avaris. The siege of this 
place was a long one. Three Theban kings failed to bring it to an end. 
At last Ahmes I succeeded in driving the foreigners beyond the isthmus. 
Egypt retained a painful memory of their mastery. They called them 
fever-breeders, lepers, brigands, the plague. Yet the Hyksos left behind 
them an appreciable treasure, which the Pharaohs were to turn to good 
account in their coming wars, namely, horses. There now remained no 
Asiatics in Egypt but the Israelites and some remnants of the Shepherds' 
army. Tanis was in ruins, Avaris destroyed, and new fortresses were built 
to shut out access to Egypt. Ahmes, in founding the eighteenth dynasty, 
inaugurated the period of conquests and great works known by the name 
of the New Empire. 

The Countries of Asia at This Time. — i. In Syria and Palestine, 
side by side with the Canaanite tribes, new peoples had been formed- 
They were descendants of Sem through Abraham and Lot, namely, the 
Ishmaelites, the Madianites, the Idumeans (from Abraham), and the 
Moabites and Ammonites (from Lot). 2, Chaldea was ever divided into 
petty kingdoms. Babylon was for a time subject to Cossean invaders, whose 
princes reigned without achieving glory or making much ado. They built 
or repaired temples, dug canals, and raised dikes. 3, To the north arose 
a new kingdom, at first a mere Chaldean colony. This was Assyria, having 
as its capital El-Assur, and as its fortress Nineveh. Its first known kings 
were contemporaries of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. They were of 
the Semitic race. 4, Between the Euphrates and the Libanus there was 
an agglomeration of small civilized kingdoms, that were commercial, 
industrial and wealthy. A great variety of races were mingled in them, 
Syrians, Amorrhites, Hittites, etc. They thought of becoming united only 
when an invasion threatened them. The Egyptians designated them by 
the name Ruten or Rutenu. 5, Phoenicia grew, enclosed between the 
sea and the Libanus and having no outlet but its seaports. Each city de- 



50 From Abraham to Moses 

veloped independently of the others. First came Arad, in the north, on a 
very small island less than two miles from the shore, with its five-story 
houses, and having no means of supplying its wants, in time of drought or 
blockade, but a fresh-water spring gushing from the bottom of the sea. 
Then Gebel, or Byblos, which founded the first colonies and boasted of 
being the oldest city in the world, began by the god El; Berytum, now 
Beirut, the "city of wells"; Sidon, "the first-born of Canaan," the city 
of flowers, the most important sea-port on that coast during the first 
period of Phoenician history; and lastly Tyre, which later on supplanted 
Sidon, its rival, built half on an islet and half on the continent. Sidon 
became famous for its glass-works and its purple. Hemmed in between 
the Libanus, whose forests furnished the wood necessary for the building 
of ships, and the sea, which with the harbors invited to navigation and 
commerce, the Phoenicians became, from necessity as much as from posi- 
tion, skilful mariners whose boats ploughed the inner sea and even passed 
out beyond the Pillars of Hercules. The population followed the progress 
of public prosperity, and ere long, as much in the interest of commerce as 
to diminish the too great number of citizens, it became necessary to send 
colonies abroad. Scripture tells us what luxury, what efi^eminacy, what 
licentious morals, what an impure and often sanguinary religion, held 
sway in Phoenicia. Baal-Moloch demanded children to be burned alive 
in his honor by their mothers, and Astarte, their great goddess, made all 
sorts of dissolute practices lawful. 

Phoenician Commerce and Colonies. — But, in spite of their vices, 
the Phoenicians gave to the world that industry, that commerce, and es- 
pecially those colonies that were so favorable to the expansion and progress 
of civilization. They probably settled in the islands of the iEgean Sea long 
before the Greeks, founded counting-houses in Africa, Spain, Gaul and 
Sicily, and turned to account the commerce of Arabia, India and Ethiopia. 
In the fifth century B. C. they still had three cities in Sicily, Moyta, Selinuns 
and Panormus. In Gaul the traces of their establishments disappeared at 
an early date; but in Spain, then so rich in silver mines, they covered the 
whole southern region with their colonies; and, in the last place, on the 
African coast arose Leptis, Adrumetum, Utica, and a new Tyre, Carthage, 
which became the greatest maritime power of antiquity, by making the 
Phoenician colonies in its neighborhood bow to its supremacy. While 
it was thus taking possession of the commerce of the western Mediterranean, 
the Phoenicians of the metropolis were dividing with the Greeks that of the 
eastern (the Levant) and were striving to increase their relations with the 
countries washed by the Indian Ocean. They had made the Jews cede to 



From Abraham to Moses 51 

them two seaports on the Red Sea, Elath and Asiongaber, whence their 
fleets set out in search of the ivory and gold dust of the land of Ophir, 
the incense and aromatics of Arabia FeHx, the pearls of the Persian Gulf, 
the most beautiful then known, and the many precious commodities of 
India. In their behalf numerous caravans traversed Babylonia, Arabia, 
Persia, Bactriana and Thibet, whence they brought back the silk of Serica, 
which was sold for its weight in gold, the peltries of Tartary, and the precious 
stones of India. They themselves added to this commerce the products 
of their national industry, such as glass, purple, and many articles of finery. 
But this prosperity aroused the cupidity of a long succession of conquerors, 
the first of whom were the Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty. 

Egyptian Conquests under the Eighteenth Dynasty. — The struggle 
against the Shepherd Kings had aroused the warhke spirit of the Egyptians. 
The first four kings of this family carried their arms to north and to south. 
Ahmes and Amenhotep I reconquered Ethiopia, and extended the boun- 
dary to the fourth cataract. Toutmes I made a sort of exploration journey 
to the Euphrates. Toutmes II completed the conquest of the southern 
country, and from that time the heir-apparent bore the title of "Prince of 
Kush." After him the queen regent Hatasu or Hatshepu assumed power 
and reigned in the name of the young Toutmes III, her nephew. She re- 
garded herself as so firmly mistress of Egypt that she had herself represented 
on the monuments with an imitation of the king's beard. She wanted to 
have an expedition of her own, and it was a sort of promenade on sea, as far 
as the land of Punt, in southern Arabia, a wealthy mart between India and 
western Asia. On her return she had her whole pacific conquest repre- 
sented on the walls of a temple at Thebes. She wished to make her capital 
an acclimatation garden. Green monkeys ran about amid merchandise. 
There was seen there also a queen from the same country, deformed from 
corpulency, who had come to pay homage to the queen of Egypt. When 
she died, her ward, now twenty-five years old, had the usurper's name 
erased wherever he could. 

He thought at once of regaining possession of Syria, which had recov- 
ered its freedom during the regency. Having overwhelmed the Syrians 
at Mageddo, personally he led in rapid succession twelve other campaigns 
into Asia, whose peoples hastened to bring him presents. He penetrated 
even as far as Assyria, where he hunted elephants. Besides Egypt prop- 
erly so called, the empire of the Pharaohs now comprised Ethiopia, the 
Punt country in Arabia, Sinai, all Syria as far as the Euphrates, and north- 
ern Mesopotamia even beyond the Tigris. The Phoenician fleet, in Tout- 
mes' service, had subdued Cyprus, Crete, and a portion of the Archipelago 



52 From Abraham to Moses 

and of the coasts of Asia Minor. Perhaps it bore the Egyptian flag to the 
southern shore of the Black Sea. Monuments of Toutmes III have been 
discovered at Cherchell in Algeria. This most powerful of the kings of 
Egypt reigned for half a century, and was succeeded by his son, Amenhotep 
II, who had to engage in war almost immediately. Having beaten the 
Assyrians, he returned to Thebes with seven vanquished kings chained 
to the prow of his bark. He slew six of them with his own hand. After 
two more successful reigns, decay set in. Then came Amenhotep IV, 
who tried to bring about a religious revolution. He made himself pontiff 
of the god Atonu, the solar disk, built an entirely new and very regularly 
laid out city in his honor, and made it his capital, at the expense of Thebes. 
He preached the new doctrine to his court, took the name Khuniatonu 
("glory of the disk"), gathered Asiatics around him and turned away 
the followers of the god Amon. His successors reigned ingloriously, 
lost all their possessions in Asia, and the dynasty became extinct. 

The Nineteenth or Ramessian Dynasty. — This line was also a race 
of conquerors. It resumed the old course in Asia, but the time for easy 
victories had passed. While the preceding dynasty was exhausting itself 
in religious quarrels, a new empire had been founded to the north of Syria, 
absorbing Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. The Hittites, or Khetas, or 
Khatti had a numerous and well disciplined army. On the field of battle 
they showed carefully drilled tactics; they used Hght war chariots drawn 
by two horses, and manned by a driver and two fighters. Their infantry, 
armed with lances and short dirks, was formed in serried phalanxes. The 
Egyptians found it no easy matter to cope with them. Ramses I, having 
undertaken to recover Syria, easily regained possession of Palestine, but 
was obliged to sign a treaty with the Kheta king. His son, Seti I, one 
of the most warhke of the kings of Egypt, had, after long struggles, to do 
likewise. He was the first to organize his Asiatic possessions on a soHd 
basis, by placing Egyptian governors and garrisons over them. He was 
succeeded by Ramses II, whom the Greeks called Sesostris, and to whom 
they attributed fabulous expeditions even into India and Scythia. In the 
fourth year of his reign the Khetas raised up against him a formidable 
coalition, in which the peoples of Asia Minor, Lycians, Carians, Dardanians 
(whose capital was Ilium or Troy), etc., took part. He came near being 
beaten. He was going down the Orontes valley, and had sent the bulk 
of his army ahead to attack Khalep (Aleppo). He was following with 
his guard. Near Kadesh the Khetas attacked him with a formidable 
body of troops. He resisted, showed great bravery, and gave his men 
time to return to his aid. The Khetas were beaten. This success, due to 



From Abraham to Moses 53 

the Pharaoh's personal valor, aroused great enthusiasm. The official 
narrative of the affair was engraven on the v^alls of the temple of Luqsor 
at Thebes, of the Ramesseum, and of the subterranean sanctuary of Ipsam- 
bul. A scribe named Pentaur sang it in an epic poem. Peace w^as signed, 
but lasted only for a short time. After fifteen years of incessant struggles, 
Ramses had to conclude a treaty that was cemented by his marriage with 
the Kheta king's daughter. 

End of the Nineteenth Dynasty. — When Ramses II died, Meneph- 
tah III, one of his sons, succeeded him at the age of sixty. The era of con- 
quests had come to an end for Egypt, and that of invasions now began. The 
rich valley of the Nile attracted the peoples of Europe and Asia. Ramses 
II had already, as we have seen, had to stop at Kadesh the Khetas united 
with the Dardanians, Lycians, Mysians, etc. At the end of his reign 
the islanders of the iEgean Sea and pirates from Greece and Italy seized 
Lybia, whence they were threatening the Delta. They were barbarians 
with fair hair, blue eyes and tattooed body. The Egyptians called them 
"the men of the land of fogs. " It is thought that from them are descended 
certain white communities found by French soldiers in Kabylia (southern 
Algeria), the Tuaregs. Ramses II drove them back; but, under his 
successor, they returned to the charge. The Delta was ravaged. The 
aged Menephtah, not daring to put himself at the head of his troops, had 
recourse to the pretext of defending his patron, the god Phtah, and re- 
mained in shelter behind his army. Yet the barbarians were repulsed; 
but a certain number obtained the privilege of settling in Egypt. This 
victory was celebrated with enthusiasm; the Pharaoh returned to Thebes 
in triumph, and men sang: "He is very strong, very wise, when he leads 
his armies; his voice penetrates the walls. His soldiers spare him who 
has humiUated himself in the presence of his courage and his strength." 
His death was followed by disasters in which the dynasty disappeared. 
Egypt became divided; the various nomes engaged in war with one another. 
Invasions, favored by this state of anarchy, began again. The slaves 
revolted. It was about that time, and probably under Menephtah, that 
the departure of the Israelites from Egypt took place. 

Persecution and Exodus of Israel. — Of all the Pharaohs, Ramses 
II was preeminently the builder king. He covered Egypt with his monu- 
ments; he even had the names of his predecessors erased from the old 
edifices and replaced by his own. He completed the temple of Luqsor 
and that of Karnak, built at Thebes a magnificent mortuary chapel, the 
Ramesseum, and had himself represented on the front of the subterranean 



54 From Abraham to Moses 

temple of Ipsambul by four seated colossi. He restored Tanis, founded 
east of the Delta a city that bore his name, guarded the isthmus with a 
chain of forts, cleaned the canals, opened gold mines in Nubia, etc. So 
as to meet the needs of so many works, he imposed compulsory labor 
on the Asiatics made prisoners of war. Then, when Asia had been paci- 
fied, veritable negro hunts in the Soudan were organized. With a high 
hand he transplanted Asiatics in Ethiopia, and negroes in Syria. The 
Egyptians were scarcely more fortunate. These toilers were poorly fed, 
and turned over to the brutahty of poHce agents. 

The foreign colonists living in the Delta suffered Hke the rest, among 
them the Israelites. Jacob's descendants had become a real nation, in 
their fertile territory they had multipHed without at first mingUng with 
the Egyptians; but later on many associated with the idolaters, and often 
adopted their manners and rehgion. But the great body of this foreign 
element came to be regarded with distrust and treated like the captives 
taken by the Pharaohs during their distant conquests. Efforts had also 
been made to make them give up the pastoral fife and live in the cities. 
So as to arrest their rapid increase in numbers, which was causing uneasi- 
ness, the king ordered that they be compelled to do task work. They were 
then forced to help in the building of the cities of Rameses, Pithom and On; 
they were made to work on the canals and the constructions of every sort 
which covered Egypt. They were sent to the royal brickyards and com- 
pelled to turn out a given quantity of bricks without having been furnished 
with the necessary straw. And v/hen they had not performed their task, 
they were beaten with rods. As these measures did not suffice, the Pharaoh 
ordered that every male child, immediately after birth, should be killed 
and the body cast into the Nile. It was then that an Israelite woman of 
the tribe of Levi, after having concealed her infant son for three months, 
sent him afloat on the river in a basket, at the place where the Pharaoh's 
daughter was accustomed to bathe. The latter heard the child crying 
and took pity on it. Moses, so called because he had been saved from the 
waters, thus came to be reared in the royal palace with his own mother 
as his nurse, and afterwards instructed in all the knowledge of the priests 
of Egypt. But his real mother had revealed his origin to him; and one 
day, when he saw an Egyptian strike a Hebrew, he slew the former. He 
had, of course, to flee for his life. Then, at the age of forty, he took refuge 
with Jethro, in the southern extremity of Arabia Petraea, where he found 
the old belief of his fathers and the patriarchal life of Abraham and Jacob. 
Thence, after another forty years, he returned to free his people, whom, 
with their flocks, he led out of "the house of bondage," across the head 
of the Red Sea, into the Sinai peninsula and the desert. This happened 
about 1400 B. C. 



From Abraham to Moses 55 

The Laws of Moses. — The Hebrews wandered long in the solitudes 
of Arabia. Under that cloudless sky and on that bare and barren earth, 
the majesty of an only God everywhere impresses one. Mount Sinai was 
consecrated by the promulgation of the civil and reHgious law, and, by 
numerous regulations which give to the Hebrew code incomparable super- 
iority over all other codes, Moses strove to bind his people to the precious 
dogma of Divine unity. Instead of caste distinctions, which, moreover, 
could not be set up in the desert, the Jews had equality of citizenship be- 
fore God, before the law, and, to a certain extent, before fortune, since, in 
the sabbatical and jubilee years (every seventh and forty-ninth year), 
slaves were freed, debts were canceled, and property that had been parted 
with vv^as restored to its former owner. The chief men among the Jews 
came from the people, and if their priests became as it were hereditary, 
because they had always to be taken from the tribe of Levi, they had only 
the heredity of poverty. In the ancient world, in which slavery was a 
part of the social organization, the Jews had servants rather than slaves. 
Elsewhere the lawgiver is concerned neither with the poor nor with the 
indigent, and repels the foreigner. Here the law was partial to the poor; 
it forbade usury, commanded almsgiving, prescribed charity, even towards 
the lower animals, and called the foreigner to the temple and the sacrifices. 
Thus, everything the ancient world lowered and despised, the Mosaic 
law elevated. In that society the foreigner was no longer an enemy, the 
slave was still a man, and the wife was deemed worthy to sit side by side 
with the head of the family and received the same respect. Besides, the 
Decalogue given to Moses on Mount Sinai is still the basis of the moral 
and religious Hfe of Christian civilization. 

Phoenicia under Egyptian Domination. — Concerned with their 
commerce above everything, the Phoenicians took scarcely any part in the 
struggles of those times. They preferred paying tribute, as long as they 
were free to monopolize Egypt's commerce. They had several marts at 
the mouths of the Nile, and a whole quarter at Memphis. Only the city 
of Arad opposed the invaders, and united with the Khetas against Ramses 
II. Sidon submitted and loaned its fleets to the Pharaohs. The Sidon- 
ians explored the whole eastern Mediterranean. Their colonists worked 
the copper mines of Cyprus; they settled on the coasts of Asia Minor and 
the islands of the ^gean Sea; and tradition made them the founders of 
the city of Thebes in Boeotia. Melos furnished them with sulphur and 
alum; at Nisyra and Gyaros they had murex fisheries for obtaining their 
purple dye, and dyeing establishments at Cos, Amorgos and Melos. They 
opened the gold mines of Mount Pangaeus in Thrace; they entered the 



56 From Abraham to Moses 

Hellespont, where Bithynia gave them silver, and then the Black Sea, 
from which they penetrated to the Caucasus mines. In the neighborhood 
of the Crimea they had tunny, sardine and murex fisheries; and from 
that region also they brought gold, silver, lead, tin and amber. At the 
same time caravans carried to Tyre and Sidon the gold of the Altai moun- 
tains, the perfumes of Arabia, and the spices of India. On the African 
coast Sidon had its counting houses as far as the region opposite Sicily 
(Leptis and Cambe). That was at the time when, the Israelites having 
conquered the Promised Lands, a multitude of Canaanites took refuge 
in Phoenicia. By their colonists the Phoenicians educated the Greeks 
in maritime matters. An intelligent and active race, the inhabitants of 
the islands and coasts of the ^gean Sea learned from the Sidonian sailors 
how to navigate and to fight; and, when they became stronger, they ex- 
pelled their masters. 

Splendor of Thebes. — Under the kings of the eighteenth and nine- 
teenth dynasties Thebes truly became "the city of the hundred pylones." 
On the left bank of the Nile, at the foot of the Libyan chain, stretched the 
city of the dead. One after another, the Theban dynasties had sought 
their burial place there. The oldest had small pyramids. The Ram- 
essides had their funereal crypts dug in a wild valley, apart. As long as 
the king lived, the excavating was kept up; only when he died was it 
stopped. There, in complicated catacombs covered with paintings and 
adorned with costly funeral furnishings, rested the remains of Seti I, Ramses 
II, Ramses III, etc., until the day when, in order to guard them from 
the profaners of tombs, the high priests of Amon had them secretly trans- 
ferred to a place nearer themselves. Their mummies were discovered 
in 1886. But to these vast crypts immense sepulchral chapels had to be 
added; and they were built apart, nearer the river. There, for a distance 
of nearly two miles, there was a succession of a dozen splendid funereal 
temples, with their pylones, colossi and porticos, each surrounded by a 
veritable village of priests, sacristans, embalmers, sculptors, painters, 
magicians and scribes. Queen Hatasu had her own at the bottom of a 
recess in the mountain; it rose in tiers on four terraces, the last three 
surrounded by porticos. Farthest back in the rock was the burial place 
of the earliest Toutmeses. Somewhat in front of this were the tombs 
of Seti I, Amenhotep III, with its two colossi, nearly seventeen yards 
high, on a pedestal of four or five (statues of Memnon), Ramses II or the 
Ramesseum, the masterpiece of Egyptian architecture, with its walls 
covered with military records, and Ramses III, an imitation of the pre- 
ceding. Behind were the tombs of the queens. 



From Abraham to Moses 57 

On the right bank of the river was the city properly so called, a jumble 
of five-story brick houses, palaces, mud huts, courts and gardens, amid 
w^hich rose the temples of Karnak and Luqsor. The Pharaohs had prided 
themselves on adorning and enlarging those old sanctuaries of the Theban 
god Amon, still so majestic in their ruins. The eighteenth dynasty had 
made of them a most imposing work. The nineteenth affected the colossi. 
Seti I and Ramses II built the famous hall with columns equal to any now 
in Europe. Later on men aimed to do even better; but the plans were so 
out of all measures that they were never finished. The exterior walls 
are covered with historic bas-reliefs; triumphal odes and epic poems are 
engraved on them in honor of the conquering kings. A sphinx avenue a 
mile and a quarter long joined Luqsor with Karnak. With the last erectors 
of these monuments Egypt's glory had departed. 



CHAPTER IV 



The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 



The Jews in the Land of Promise. — The hour had come tor God's 
chosen people to make for itself a permanent home and to develop into a 
great nation. Two peoples might, in other times, have opposed its nascent 
power; but one of these, Assyria, was scarcely beginning to appear, and 
the other, Egypt, was exhausted. As if to prepare the way for the Hebrew 
conquest, the latter had lost its hold on Canaan during the middle period of 
Moses' career. Moses had striven to lead his people into the country in 
which Abraham had chosen to pitch his tent; but he died outside and just 
within sight of it. His successor, Josue, crossed the Jordan, destroyed 
Jericho, overthrew nearly all of the petty kingdoms, and divided the lands 
among the twelve tribes of Israel. Upon his death, the pohtical bond hold- 
ing the tribes together was broken, and the government of the Elders was 
too weak to complete the conquest of the country or repel the attacks of 
the neighboring kings. Whence came bondages from which the Jews were 
delivered by strong, brave men who, after victory, remained in power as 
Judges, that is, formed a sort of temporary monarchy in that patriarchal 
republic. Those heroes of Israel were Othoniel, Ahod, who fought with 
both hands, Samgar, the prophetess Deborah, Gideon, who dispersed a 
v>?^hole army with three hundred men, Jephtha, who sacrificed his daughter 
to satisfy an imprudent vow, Samson, famous for his prodigious strength, 
the high priest Heli, under whom the Ark of the Covenant, in which the 
book of the Law was kept, was carried off by the Philistines, and in the 
last place Samuel, whom, in spite of his wise and just administration, the 
Hebrews compelled to give them a king. He chose (1097 B.C.) Saul, of 
the tribe of Benjamin, who to him seemed unsophisticated and easy to lead. 
He consecrated him by pouring holy oil on his head, and then he deposited 
in the ark a book in which he had written the rights and duties of the new 
royalty. At first Saul justified the prophet's choice by his moderation and 
victories. But, made proud by his successes, he abandoned his rustic 
manners, took to himself a bodyguard of three thousand men, and threw 
off the yoke of the high priest, who then secretly anointed a shepherd of 
58 



The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 59 

the tribe of Judah, named David, and introduced him into the royal palace 
that he might one day succeed the indocile prince there. The king's 
young equerry attracted the attention and admiration of all Israel by slay- 
ing the Philistine giant, Goliath. Saul, devoured by jealousy, tried on 
several occasions to kill him with his spear. When he himself had fallen 
(in 1058) in a battle against the Philistines, the tribes of Judah and Ben- 
jamin, and some years later the other ten, acknowledged David as King of 
Israel. 

The Reigns of David and Solomon. — At the time there was no 
menace of danger from Egypt and Assyria. The little Jewish state could 
develop and extend without encountering too formidable adversaries, and 
Palestine, which had often been the highway of conquerors, became itself 
a conqueror in its turn. The capture of Sion (Jerusalem), which had 
hitherto maintained its independence against the Hebrews, the destruction 
of the Philistines and the Moabites, many successes over all the neighbor- 
ing peoples, and the extension of his kingdom's boundaries, to the north 
as far as the Euphrates and southward to the Red Sea, reveal in David 
the victorious prince; while his regulations affecting worship, public 
administration, justice, the organizing of a numerous army, a tenth of 
which was always under arms, and lastly the materials he collected for the 
building of the Temple and the commercial treaties he concluded with 
Tyre, all prove his solicitude in time of peace. But a base crime, the 
murder of Uriah, so he could marry his victim's wife, and the revolt of his 
favorite son Absalom, saddened his closing years. All the Christian 
Churches still chant his sublime psalms. 

His son Solomon, who succeeded him in 1019, was an unwarlike 
prince, fond of luxury and a promoter of civilization. Like the kings of 
the Orient, he governed from the heart of his palace. At first he strength- 
ened his power by punishments, made the office of chief sacrificer dependent 
on himself so as to free royalty from every counterpoise, and in magnificent 
style built the temple of Jerusalem. His wisdom, proved by a famous 
judgment, the founding of Palmyra (Tadmur) in the midst of the desert, 
the creation of a merchant navy, and his treaties of alliance with Tyre and 
Egypt, made his reputation so widespread that the queen of Sheba (or 
Saba) in southwestern Arabia came to visit the great monarch of the Orient. 
But under this outward splendor, demanding an enormous increase of 
taxation, the provinces were becoming impoverished, and Solomon himself 
in another way sapped the foundations of his power, namely, by introduc- 
ing idolatry into his palace. The Idumeans and the Syrians revolted, his 
subjects rebelled against the increasing weight of the taxes, and after hav- 



6o The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 

ing sown the seeds of dissolution for his monarchy he died in the midst of 
pubHc miseries. His son Roboam having refused to diminish the levies 
for the royal treasury, ten of the tribes seceded to form the nevsr kingdom of 
Israel, leaving only Benjamin and Judah faithful to the house of David. 
Not only his schism, but vv^ars between the two realms and turmoils within 
eacii s^ weakened both that in a comparatively short time they fell a prey 
to conquerors from Mesopotamia. 

The Rise of Assyria. — At the time of the Hebrew conquest Canaan, 
Assyria was scarcely beginning, but it soon gave a faint forecast of what 
it would be later on. At first in vassalage to Chaldea, which had become a 
Semitic State at a time which scholars have so far been unable to determine, 
it had first won its independence and then extended its sway over Mesopo- 
tamia; and if at one time it had to pay tribute to the Egyptian kings of the 
eighteenth dynasty, it took its revenge by conquering Babylonia. Its 
first great warrior king, Tuglat-Adar I, subdued Chaldea (about 1270 
B.C.). The thirteenth century is filled with the struggle between the two 
countries, and at last Assyria gains the upper hand. Towards the end of 
the period of the Judges in Israel (about 1150) Tiglath-Pileser I was able 
to tell, in an inscription, how he had subdued in turn the Moschians, 
Comagene, Armenia and Syria, and extended his empire to the Libanus, 
the Black Sea and the Persian Gulf. The Assyrians had already appeared 
as what they were to remain until the end, valiant, tenacious, and greedy 
for battles and blood. In their eyes every war was a war of religion. They 
fought for their god Assur. Assur's enemies were the enemies of the 
people; to him alone every victory was attributed. He alone directed 
the blows and triumphed. He boasted of their exploits. Wars were but 
slaughters, cities razed, vanquished impaled, heads cut oif", statues of gods 
carried off, plantations destroyed. They were great hunters; and, in the 
sequel of the narrative of his conquests, Tiglath-Pileser adds: "Thanks 
to the gods, I have slain in the desert four male buffaloes, exceedingly big 
and strong. With my bow, with my iron sword, and with my spear, I have 
slain them; I have brought their skins and horns to the city of Assur. I 
have also slain ten large elephants at the sources of the Chaboras; their 
skins and their defences are at Assur. I have captured some alive. On 
another occasion I slew twenty lions. Having advanced into Phoenicia, he 
borrowed vessels and during a cruise slew a dolphin. The uneasy Pharaohs 
sought to win his friendship by sending to him crocodiles and hippopotami. 
His successors were unable to keep his conquests, and Assyria relapsed 
into oblivion. 

Phoenicia and the Colonies of Tyre. — ^The destruction of Sidon by the 



The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 6i 

Philistines is referred to the year 1209 B.C. The fugitives sought shelter 
at Tyre, which on this account became the chief city of Phoenicia. All 
the others, feeling the danger to which they were exposed by remaining 
isolated, gathered in a sort of federation around Tyre, whose prince assumed 
the title of king of the Sidonians. Every year deputies assembled in the 
temple of the god Melkarth to discuss the common interests. Sidon's old 
colonies had decayed or disappeared after the destruction of the metropolis. 
All around the i^gean Sea kingdoms were formed that also made experi- 
ments in navigation, such as those of the Dardanians and the Carians in 
A^ia Minor, and of the Danase in Greece. The commerce of Tyre must 
therefore seek farther on, towards the west, free spaces in which to develop. 
On the African coast Sidon had already founded Hippo (the Modern Bona 
in Algeria) and Cambe. In 1158 Tyre founded Utica, and then, advancing 
gradually, its vessels soon reached the Strait of Gibraltar, passed beyond, 
and founded Gades (now Cadiz) in Spain. The region thus discovered they 
called Tharsish (Andalusia). Other Tyrian colonies in Spain were Malaca 
(Malaga), the city of "salt provisions"; Sex (Motril), the city "scorched by 
the sun"; Abdera (Almeria), etc. In a short time, along the whole Spanish 
coast, there were nearly three hundred Phoenician counting houses. They 
shipped from the country gold, silver, iron, lead, copper, tin, honey, wax 
and peas. On the Atlantic coast of Africa they founded Tingis (Tangier), 
and visited the Canaries (the Fortunatae Insulae of the Romans), Ma- 
deira and the Azores. To the north, they sought tin on the Sodingian 
islands, and yellow amber in the Baltic. The Veneti and the Nanneti 
of Gaul (Brittany) were initiated by them in the art of seamanship. For 
resting places between the metropolis and the colonies, they occupied, in 
the twelfth century B. C, Malta and Gaulos (Gozzo). They also had 
colonies in Sicily, Sardinia and southern Gaul (Heraclea, Palermo, Nora, 
Monaco, etc.). 

At the same time caravans flocked to Tyre from all points of the 
Orient. 

Egypt under the Twentieth and Twenty- first Dynasties.— By 
this time the end of Egypt's splendor had come. Ramses III had as 
successors a series of do-nothing kings who lost all of the country's Asiatic 
possessions. The Egyptians, moreover, had wearied of war. More and 
more did they abandon the military trade to foreign mercenaries, especially 
the Libyans, and aspire to a Hfe of ease. Men scofi^ed at the glorious 
expeditions of the Pharaohs. In a caricature is to be seen the king of the 
rats in the attitude of a Ramses and a Toutmes, on a chariot drawn by 
dogs, besieging the cats in their citadel, hurling his army upon them and 



62 The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 

piercing them all over with arrows. At the same time Egypt became 
divided. It was threatened from the north by Europeans and Asiatics. 
The Pharaohs left Thebes, which was far too remote, and settled in the 
Delta, whose old cities revived and were embellished. But at Thebes 
remained the high priests of Amon, owners of nearly all the soil of Upper 
Egypt. They soon yielded to the temptation to make themselves kings. 
When the twentieth dynasty had become extinct ingloriously, a prince of 
Tanis, who gave himself out as a descendant of Ramses II, seized the 
crown (twenty-first dynasty). The high priest Hir-Hor did likewise at 
Thebes. More and more there were two Egypts — that of the south with 
its priest-kings, sometimes mistress of Ethiopia and sometimes its vassal, 
but holding on to the old traditions; and that of the north, invaded by 
foreigners, their manners and their languages. 

The Twenty- second Dynasty. — When Jeroboam, the leader of 
revolt against Solomon and afterwards the first king of Israel, was an exile 
in Egypt, he did not find there Solomon's ally, the Tanite dynasty. Men- 
aced by invasions from without and plots from within, and finding the 
people refractory against the miUtary life, it had been so imprudent as to 
call to its aid foreign mercenaries, especially Libyans. A valiant army of 
them had been formed, but it was full of ambitious men. Their leaders had 
at last seized all the high offices. The chief cities were in their power; 
there they formed an aristocracy of soldiers, almost independent, making and 
unmaking kings at their pleasure. Under the last of the Tanites one of 
these generals, Shoshong (the Sesac of the Bible), prince of Bubaste, was 
all-powerful. He was already treated as "Majesty" and "Prince of 
princes," He was commander-in-chief of the Libyans, and had the right 
to speak face to face to the gods. His eldest son had married the Pharaoh's 
daughter, hereditary princess. His second son had become high priest 
of Amon, and consequently master of Thebes. When the Tanite king 
disappeared, Shoshong succeeded him by force of circumstances (twenty- 
second dynasty,) and found himself acknowledged by the two Egypts and 
Nubia. Ethiopia escaped him — it was in the hands of the priest-kings, 
descendants of Hir-Hor, who had taken refuge there and made Napata 
their capital. Thebes was actually abandoned; its people were Hving 
in wretchedness and had no resources but from pillaging the tombs of 
the kings of old. Shoshong, once master of all Egypt, could not but dream 
of still better things. He turned his attention towards Syria and wished 
to make his troops resume the march to it. Accordingly he supported 
every revolt that broke out against Solomon. He eagerly welcomed Jero- 
boam and made him marry his queen's sister. Early in the turmoil follow- 



The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 63 

ing Solomon's death, Shoshong invaded Judah, and pillaged Jerusalem, 
its temple and its palaces. These facile exploits he had recorded on a 
wall of the temple of Karnak. So as to outshine if possible his greatest 
predecessors, he enumerated the smallest hamlets, to the number of consid- 
erably over one hundred, and the same town recurs several times under 
different names. In fact, he had not passed beyond Mageddo. He died 
some time afterwards, without having had time to reap the fruits of his 
victories. 

Egypt in the Ninth and Eighth Centuries B. C. — Just when Assyria 
was once more becoming prominent, Egypt was too much weakened to 
resist it. Dynasty succeeded dynasty, one overthrowing another. That 
of Shoshong, which reigned at Bubaste, was deposed by the twenty-third, 
whose seat was at Tanis. A warlike prince of Tais was trying to found 
another when there came from remote Ethiopia a king of Napata who 
conquered all Egypt. Then a king of Sais, Boccoris, formed of himself alone 
the twenty-fourth dynasty, and acquired a great reputation as a redresser 
of wrongs. But now the king of Thebes, Sabaco, went to war, attacked 
Boccoris, captured him, and flayed him aUve. The princes of his family 
took refuge in the marshes, where they awaited an opportunity to reappear 
on the scene, Sabaco, however, founded the twenty-fifth or Ethiopian 
dynasty. Powerful and a wise administrator, he repaired the cities and 
the canals. He was said to be clement because, to provide for these works, 
for the death penalty he substituted task labor, that is, the severest kind 
of penal servitude. In his reign Egypt revived for a moment so far as to 
attract the attention of the kings of Israel, who counted on aid from it 
against Assyria. 

Revival of Assyria. — The successors of Tiglath-Pileser I had not been 
able to hold his conquests. From the twelfth to the ninth century B. C, 
Assyria has almost no history. After a group of sluggard-kings came a 
series of princes who busied themselves especially with works of public 
utility, such as dikes, canals, fortifications and temples. At last, in the 
ninth century, a new generation revived the interrupted traditions. Assur- 
Nazir-habal (885-860) made a campaign a year. There was constant 
war on the frontiers — in Chaldea, in Kurdistan, and beyond the Euphrates. 
He himself left the grim record of his deeds on the walls of his palace of 
Kalak, in which he speaks not only of his expeditions abroad, but of re- 
volts in Mesopotamia and elsewhere, which he ruthlessly suppressed. 
There were ever putting out of eyes, cutting ofi^ of noses, ears and hands, 
pillaging and razing of cities, and filling up of ravines with dead bodies. 
He reigned twenty-five years, and had penetrated even into Phoenicia. 



64 The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 

Salmanaza) III (860-825) was a warrior like his father. During his 
reign the IsraeLces made the acquaintance of Assyria. From that time the 
iron hand weighed ever more heavily. In 854 King Achab joined a coalition 
of the Syrian kings frightened at the progress of their terrible neighbors; 
but with them he was beaten at Karkar. A revolt that broke out at Ba- 
bylon forced Salmanazar to retrace his steps. He appeared again four times 
from 851 to 843, and in the latter year captured Damascus. Jehu of Israel 
was frightened, hastened to pay tribute and sent to the Assyrian king in- 
gots of gold and silver, dishes, cups and valuable weapons, so as to pur- 
chase peace and protection against his Syrian neighbor. The latter in his 
turn purchased the right to attack Israel, and poor Jehu was badly beaten 
on all his frontiers. But Salmanazar Ill's successors gradually let Assyria 
decline. Another series of do-nothing kings for over three quarters of 
a century became exhausted in the presence of revolts that broke out at 
the very gates of Nineveh. It is to this time that is referred the preach- 
ing of Jonah in that great city, during the reign of Assur-Nizar, the Sar- 
danapalus of the Greeks. His scandalous excesses and effeminate life led 
the Chaldean Phul and the Median Arbaces to rebel. Four successive de- 
feats did not discourage them, and they at last shut up their enemy in 
Nineveh. There is doubt, however, about the story that, rather than 
surrender, Sardanapalus put himself and his family to death by fire. 
Though the city suffered greatly on that occasion, it was not totally des- 
troyed (745 B. C). 

The Second Assyrian Empire. — The Medes had regained their 
independence and the Babylonians were masters of Assyria. Under 
Tiglath-Pileser III, the Phul of the Bible, that empire suddenly revived. 
After his victory and usurpation he became strong enough to resume the 
wars of the Ninevites against the peoples living west of the Euphrates, 
and to compel Manahem, king of Judah, to pay tribute to him. In the 
beginning of his reign he imposed himself on Chaldea, where he crucified 
a king who had dared to resist him. Before his death he warred once more 
against Syria, Israel and Judah. Galilee, as well as the whole country 
east of the Jordan was conquered; the inhabitants were transferred to 
Assyria, and those of the kingdom of Damascus to Armenia (733-732). 
The kingdom of Israel was reduced to Samaria. Before returning home, 
the conqueror called a meeting of his new vassals at Damascus. Among 
the twenty-five kings who answered the summons was the unfaithful 
Achaz of Judah, who came away from that humiliating interview more 
of an idolater than ever. He made his children pass through fire in honor 
of Moloch; but that did not keep his afflicted kingdom from being ravaged 
by the Idumeans and the Phihstines. 



The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 65 

When Salmanazar V succeeded his father at Nineveh, the Israelites 
thought the time opportune to throw off the Assyrian yoke. Phoenicia, 
Syria and Samaria revolted. Egypt, under Sabaco, seemed to have re- 
gained its rank as a great nation, and they formed an alHance with it. Sal- 
manazar summoned his tributary of Israel to him and cast him into prison, 
after which nothing is heard of him. The Assyrians then invaded what 
remained of the kingdom of Israel and laid siege to its capital, which held 
out for two years. During this time (722) Salmanazar fell a victim to a 
military conspiracy, and one of his officers, Sargon, was proclaimed as 
king. Samaria, exhausted by famine, at last surrendered (721), and over 
twenty-seven thousand of its best inhabitants were seized and scattered 
over Mesopotamia and Media. In their place Sargon put Chaldeans and 
Syrians, who brought with them their superstitions, which they mingled 
with the worship of the true God, united with the IsraeHtes left behind, and 
thus formed a mixed race known thereafter as the Samaritans. 

Assyria imder Sargon. — There was continual war in the empire. 
At every change of rulers the vassals tried to regain their independence. 
An expedition soon forced them back under the yoke; but, as soon as peace 
was restored at one point, revolt broke out again at another. The empire 
was divided into provinces, each having at its head a prefect supported by 
a garrison. The most serious trouble came from Babylonia, where a 
certain Merodach-Baladan set himself up as "king of the sea," that is, of 
lower Chaldea. Afterwards assuming the title of king of Babylon, he 
sought aid from Elam, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. King Ezechiah of 
Judah not only consented, but foolishly displayed his treasures, which 
roused the prophet Isaias to predicting that they would one day become 
the prey of the Babylonians. He also foretold that the Egyptians, whose 
side the Jevv^s adopted, would ere long be crushed, and said the wisest course 
for the latter to follow was to become tributary to Assyria. This prudent 
advice prevailed, and it vv^as none too soon. Sargon, forestalling the rebels, 
invaded western Asia. The king of Hamath was captured and flayed 
alive, and the Egyptians hastening to his aid were crushed at Raphia. 
Then Sargon turned against Chaldea, whose self-made king, abandoned by 
his allies, fled (709). That was only an episode. Sargon's reign was, 
in short, but one long warfare of fifteen years. He beat the Elamites 
in 721, the Egyptians and Syrians in 720, Zikartu in 719, Tabal in 718, 
destroyed what was left of the Kheta or Khatti empire at the great battle 
of Carchemish in 717, defeated the Medes in 716 and 715, reduced Urzana 
in 714, etc. He was at last going to enjoy rest in his splendid new palace 
of Dur-Surrakin (city of Sargon), when he was assassinated by a foreign 

5 



66 The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 

soldier. He was perhaps the greatest king Assyria ever had. He was 
an able general and a wise administrator, and he knew how to deal gently 
with the vanquished. 

The Reign of Sennacherib. — His son (704-681) did not resemble 
him. Sennacherib was fierce, haughty and implacable. He began by 
stirring up discontent in Chaldea, which at once rose in revolt when re- 
duced to the rank of a mere province. Its exiled king came upon the 
scene once more, and all western Asia joined in the movement, even includ- 
ing Judah under Ezechiah, in spite of Isaiah's warnings. Sennacherib 
first marched against Chaldea, whose king was again beaten, pursued, and 
compelled to hide in the swamps. After a campaign against the Medes 
and the Cosseans, the Assyrians turned to the west, leaving only a desert 
behind them wherever they went. In a little while only Tyre and Judah 
were left unsubdued; but while they were depending on aid from Egypt 
that did not come in time, the former was chastised. When at last the 
Egyptians arrived, they were utterly defeated, and Ezechiah was left to 
face the Assyrians alone. Sennacherib set up his camp at Lachis, thirty- 
five miles from Jerusalem, and ravaged the whole country around. The 
king of Judah offered to submit and pay the enormous tribute demanded 
of him; but when he was asked to surrender Jerusalem also, he prepared 
for resistance. Sennacherib sent an army corps to besiege the city, and 
was preparing to follow so as to take charge of the operations himself 
when an Egyptian army appeared. He defeated it without much loss and 
was turning towards Jerusalem when suddenly a terrible plague in one night 
destroyed 185,000 of his men (702). 

The next dozen years were taken up with constant wars against Chal- 
dea and its alUes, the Elamites, on whom terrible reprisals were visited. 
At last came Babylon's turn. The massacre there lasted many days, and 
pillage was carried on systematically. The treasures of the temple were 
distributed among the victors, the sacred edifices were torn down, and the 
idols were broken with hatchet blows. Those that were spared were 
carried off to Assyria and there humiUated before the rival gods. At the 
same time as he was ruining Babylon, the indefatigable king was covering 
Assyria, and especially Nineveh, with monuments. The prisoners were 
condemned to hard labor, and so Assyrian art then reached its highest 
development. Sennacherib was slain by two of his own sons during a 
sacrifice. His successor was another son, then governor of Babylon. 

Assarhaddon and Assurbanipal — Conquest of Egypt. — ^The next 
king was a lover of peace. He had Babylon rebuilt, and, dressed as a 



The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 67 

mason, he himself laid the first stone of the new city. He was the most 
humane of the Assyrian monarchs, but could not altogether avoid war. 
Sidon revolted, was taken and pillaged, its king was captured at sea, and 
the Sidonians were scattered. Next came the turn of the Cimmerians, 
the Scythians and the Medes. Then Assarhaddon coveted southern 
Arabia, which was said to contain marvelous treasures. But his army 
soon grew tired of the desert, where it found only rocks, scorpions and ser- 
pents; and, after having slain six kings and three queens at the foot of an 
alabaster mountain, it retraced its steps. Only Egypt was now not in- 
cluded in the empire. It was then ruled by an Ethiopian Pharaoh named 
Taharqu, an energetic and obstinate prince and a good warrior and ad- 
ministrator. The country had been prosperous under him for twenty 
years; but he fostered the spirit of revolt in his Syrian neighbors, and 
accordingly the Assyrian king decided to carry the war to the Nile (670). 
Taharqu was beaten on several occasions, and fled to Napata. Memphis 
was taken and pillaged, and the gods, treasures and furnishings of its temples 
were carried off to Nineveh. Egypt became a province of the Assyrian 
empire, and Assyrian names were given to its cities. The conqueror 
assumed the title of " king of the kings of Egypt. " 

The Assyrians found it difficult to hold their conquest. Over each 
of the Egyptian kinglets they had set a supervising prefect, and, aiming 
to flatter their vanity, they appointed as viceroy one of them, Nechao I, 
prince of Sais (twenty-sixth dynasty, 672 B. C). But scarcely had Assar- 
haddon returned to Nineveh when war broke out again. Taharqu came 
down the Nile with an army. The whole Delta, with Nechao at its head, 
arose. Assarhaddon fell ill and died, and his son and successor, Assur- 
banipal, was the last warrior king of Assyria, and as fierce as his father. 
His lieutenants succeeded in once more driving the Ethiopians to the south. 
They pillaged Thebes, reduced the Delta, captured, flayed and impaled 
the leaders of the revolt, and sent Nechao in chains to Nineveh. From 
poHcy, Assurbanipal treated him with clemency. Instead of putting out 
his eyes, he loaded him with honors, gave him a scimitar in a gold scabbard, 
a royal chariot, the whole outfit of the supreme power, and sent him back 
repentant to Egypt, where he did nofreign very long. Taharqu was dead, 
but his son-in-law, Urdamen, came down the Nile once more. Nechao 
was slain, and his son, Psammetik, had to fly into Syria. Assurbanipal 
came to Egypt in person, drove back Urd-Amen beyond Thebes, ravaged 
that city, carried off" its inhabitants, and restored Psammetik. He also 
humbled Judah, seized its king, Manasseh, and imprisoned him at Baby- 
lon. An Assyrian governor took his place at Jerusalem. 

Elam was reduced to submission after a struggle of twenty years, and 



68 The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 

never was there more merciless repression. The head of its king, Teuman, 
was exposed to rot on the point of a pike over one of the gates of Nineveh. 
His sons were sent home with their lips cut off, so as to intimidate the 
Susians. Assurbanipal seized the treasures accumulated in Susa from time 
immemorial, and had the statues of the Elamite gods and kings transferred 
to Assyria. The forests were burned and the wells filled up. These 
ravages lasted nearly two months. But for the difference of names, one 
might imagine he was reading of the horrors perpetrated by Timour's 
Mongols, so barbarously were the prisoners treated. Such was Assyrian 
civilization! After this Elam ceased to exist as a nation, and Chaldea 
suffered but little less, though it escaped being annihilated. But it was soon 
going to have its revenge. Assurbanipal died in 625 B. C, and less than 
twenty years later Nineveh was but a heap of ruins. 

Asia and Egypt at AssurbanipaPs Death. — When the fierce butcher- 
ing conqueror died, he left a vast empire, submissive and trembling; but, 
from Egypt to Media, it was strewn with ruins. Chaldea, Susiana and 
Mesopotamia were ravaged; Syria was decadent, Israel had disappeared, 
and there was but little life left in Judah and Phoenicia. Assyria itself 
was exhausted by its wars; and its king, having no longer the strength to 
hold Egypt and Lydia, abandoned his rights over both these countries. 
At the same time there was being formed to the east the Median empire 
that was to inflict the death-blow on Assyria. Psammetik I, son of Nechao 
I, let the Assyrian empire fall without seeking to take advantage of the 
catastrophe. But he restored prosperity to Egypt, rebuilt the temples, 
protected agriculture, kept up the commercial relations with Phoenicia and 
Greece, attracted Greeks to his country, and of them formed a small army 
which he bequeathed to his son, Nechao II. He had reigned fifty-five 
years (666-611). His successor in his turn created a fleet. He is famous 
for the voyage he caused to be made around Africa by some of his vessels 
manned by Phoenicians. They set out from the Red Sea, and three years 
later appeared again at the mouths of the Nile. Every year, at the end of 
the fine season, they had stopped, sown wheat, and waited for the harvest; 
and, their provisions having been thus secured, they set out again. 

Phoenicia and the Founding of Carthage. — Since the destruction of 
Sidon by the Philistines, Phoenicia formed a sort of confederation in which 
Tyre had the first place. Only the city of Arad held aloof. The first king 
of Tyre, Abibaal, was a contemporary of David, as was also his successor, 
Hiram I. The most glorious reigns were the latter's and that of Ithobaal, 
a contemporary of Josaphat and father of Jezebel. But internal revolu- 



The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 69 

tions were very frequent. The history of Tyre is that of a long struggle 
between the aboriginal popular party and the aristocracy that had come 
from Sidon. The most famous episode is that which led to the founding of 
Carthage. 

Mathan, Isabaal's second successor, left two children, a son, Piimeliun, 
and a daughter, Elissar (Virgil's Pygmalion and Elissa or Dido). By his will 
they were to reign together. The democratic party wished to recog- 
nize as ruler only the son, who was but eleven years old, as its leaders 
hoped to rule in his name. EHssar, wife of the high priest, Zicharbaal, was 
at the head of the aristocratic party. It was said that her husband had 
immense treasures buried under ground. PiimeHun had him murdered. 
To avenge this deed, Elissar organized a vast conspiracy. But, seeing 
there was no chance of success, the conspirators decided that, rather than 
remain subject to their enemies, they would go into exile. A fleet in the 
harbor was ready to sail; Elissar seized it and fled with her followers. 
She disembarked in Africa, at the ruins of Cambe, a former colony of 
Sidon, and there founded Carthage (822). That was the signal of decline 
for Phoenicia. 

The Tyrian colonies had not ceased to grow until the reign of Ithobaal 
I. They had extended into the Atlantic as far as the Senegal, and be- 
yond Great Britain towards the north (island of Thule); but one after 
another they fell away from the metropolis. Other peoples had learned the 
art of navigation from the Phoenicians and used it against them. The 
Etruscans took their colonies in Italy and Gaul from them; the Greeks 
those of the iEgean Sea and Sicily. Carthage grew, eclipsed all the other 
Phoenician establishments, and, owing to its central position, became in its 
turn a metropolis, and founded the Punic empire. On the other hand, the 
Phoenician cities, sometimes in revolt and sometimes tributary, had to suff"er 
much from Assyria. Arad was the most valiant, and on this account it was 
pillaged on several occasions. Tyre was able to resist Sargon for ten years 
but was taken by Sennacherib (700). Sidon, having rebelled against Assar- 
haddon, was wiped out in 680. At the close of Assarbanipal's reign Phoeni- 
cia had hardly any colonies left; but its commerce was lessened very little on 
this account. It had lost its political importance, however, and was simply 
a mercantile agent for the whole world. 

The Medes and the Persians. — About this time there was being organ- 
ized into an empire the people that, united with Babylonia, was to annihil- 
ate the power of Assyria. The Medes belonged to the Aryan race. Vague 
traditions related that their ancestors had formerly dwelt in the valleys of 
the Oxus and the Jaxartes. They must have divided into sections. A 



70 The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 

group of their tribes had gone down into Hindustan and there founded 
Brahminism. Others had wandered about Iran or the Persian plateau. 
There they had spht up once more. While the Persians settled to the 
southwest, east of Elam, in the mountains bordering on the Persian Gulf, 
the Medes took up their abode to the south of the Caspian Sea. The two 
sister nations thus occupied the western part of the region known by the 
name of Iran. It is a vast desolate plateau, bounded on the north by the 
mass of the Elburz mountains (of which Mount Demavend is over six 
thousand yards high), that of Khorassan (over forty-three hundred yards) 
and that of the Hindu-Kush (same height); on the east by the Soliman 
mountains (over thirty-two hundred yards); on the south by the moderate 
elevations of Mekran and Beluchistan; and on the west by five or six 
ranges of parallel chains which the Greeks called the Zagros mountains 
and in which Mount Elvend reaches a height of thirty-five hundred yards. 
In the northern region of these last-named mountains were the Medes, and 
in the southern the Persians. There the soil was fertile, but more so in 
the north than in the south. Below the bare summits the slopes were 
covered with forests, and the valleys presented the appearance of veritable 
natural orchards. The pear, the apple, the quince, the olive, the cherry, 
the peach and the grape prospered there. Side by side with wild beasts, 
the lion, the leopard and the bear, there were fine races of horses, the 
wild ass, the buffalo, the dromedary and the two-humped camel. The 
mountains contained copper, iron, lead, a little gold and silver, and precious 
stones. 

Their Religion — Mazdeism. — The Medes and the Persians brought 
with them to their new home a religious doctrine very different from that 
which later on prevailed on the banks of the Ganges. They acknowledged 
as their lawgiver Zoroaster, who seems to have lived between 1500 and 1000 
B. C, and whose teachings are contained in the Avesta, the sacred book 
of the Persians. This doctrine, which is called Mazdeism or the Universal 
Knowledge, is the purest and mildest known to polytheistic antiquity. 
Zervana Akerene, the first principle of things, eternal, infinite, immutable 
and motionless, created Ormuzd, the lord of knowledge or wisdom, the 
source of light and of life, like the sun, his emblem, the author of all good 
and of all justice, and Ahriman, his enemy, the principle of physical and 
moral evil. Each of them commands a hierarchy respectively of celestial 
and of infernal spirits that strive to extend their chief's empire — the one 
by shedding light, life, purity and happiness, the other by multiplying evil- 
doing animals and baneful influences. But a day will corne when Ahri- 
n>an, at last vanquished, will acknowledge his defeat and go to Ormuzd, 



The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 71 

to enjoy himself in the life of happiness, with all the perverts he had led 
to evil and whom suffering will have purified. Thus Ormuzd's goodness 
is eternal and unbounded;Ahriman's wickedness is limited to the time of 
trials that prepare the way for and justify redemption — God's mercy, then, 
surpasses His justice, and the hell of the Persians was only a purgatory. 

Man created with an immortal and free soul is the prize in the com- 
bat between the two hostile principles; and as Ahriman's diuws surround 
him incessantly to lead him to evil, Zoroaster has given him the law of 
Ormuzd to keep him to well-doing — a humane and gentle law that recog- 
nizes the rights of life while proclaiming those of heaven; which calls for 
faith, but also for works, toil, almsgiving, and purity of soul and body; 
which repels barren asceticism and permits care for earthly things in order 
that man, satisfying the legitimate needs of his nature without exceeding 
them, may have more merit for resisting the temptations that are hid- 
den in it. Work is a holy thing. The faithful disciple owes the most 
careful attention to the earth that nourishes him and to the animals that 
serve him — a common affection is the result of a community of toil. In 
the last place, marriage is a sacred bond, and many children are a blessing. 
Prayer is inculcated, and is sometimes a confession made to God. But, 
unfortunately, man too often neglects his doctrines to follow his passions, 
and the adherents of this comparatively pure teaching have inflicted on 
the world as many evils as those of many other religions. But yet they 
do not seem to have ever fallen so low in moral depravity as the peoples 
that sought their gods from the physical ideas of fecundity and generation. 

The Early Median Kings. — We know nothing of the peoples of this 
race that remained on the banks of the Oxus, in Sogdiana and Bactriana; 
but, owing to the narratives of the Greeks and the cuneiform inscriptions, 
we are better acquainted with the Medes; and it is through the Persians 
that the bond between Asia and Europe was formed which has not been 
broken since the Graeco-Median wars. But our data concerning the Medes 
begin rather late, only in the middle of the eighth century B. C, when 
Arbaces, their Assyrian governor, helped Phul of Babylonia to overthrow 
Sardanapalus. Before becoming subject to Assyria they had lived as 
separate tribes nearly always at war with one another, and under it paid a 
tribute of race horses to Tiglath-Pileser III (Phul). Some time after 
that they became united into a single kingdom, their first king, according 
to Herodotus, being called Dejoces. Another king, named Phraortes, 
opened the era of conquests by subduing the Persians. Then he fortified 
his capital, Ecbatana (Ispahan), turned against Assyria, and was beaten 
(635). His son, Cyaxares, began by reorganizing the army, separating 



72 The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 

the cavalry from the foot-soldiers, and the archers from the pikemen. 
After having tried his strength against the Parthians, he attacked his 
M^estern neighbors and beat the Assyrian troops. Nineveh ordered the 
governor of Babylon, Nabopolassar, to march against him; but this am- 
bitious man refused, proclaimed himself king, and entered into alliance 
v^^ith the Medes, whose king's daughter soon became his daughter-in-law. 
In 625 the allies laid siege to Nineveh; but the city was saved for a time 
by an invasion of the Scythians, from whose ravages during a quarter of a 
century western Asia was then suffering. Deprived of their leaders by 
Cyaxares, who had them murdered at a feast to which he had invited them, 
they returned to the North. Then Nineveh was once more besieged (6c8). 

Fall of Nineveh and Battle of Mageddo. — We have no authentic 
account of this momentous siege, which lasted two years, nor are we even 
certain who was then king of Assyria. The lact monarch whose name is 
given in the records is Sinshariskhun, a younger son of Assurbanipal, who 
succeeded his brother about 620 B. C. The city, which contained the 
wealth accumulated by several centuries of brigandage, was a vast collection 
of great towns, each having its own walls, citadel, temples and palaces, and 
all joined together by their suburbs. Some think it had a circumference of 
over forty miles. It was an immense intrenched camp occupying the tri- 
angle formed by the Tigris, the Upper Zab and the Djebel Maklub. It was 
protected on all sides by a girdle of forts. To the east, on the Tigris, was 
Nineveh properly so called, from which, on two hills, the royal palaces over- 
looked the left bank like citadels. It had been embellished and fortified 
by the kings in succession, but especially by Sennacherib. He had built 
for himself a superb palace covering over five acres, around which were 
battlemented ramparts and fortified castlets, with cedar and sandalwood 
beams, incrusted with ivory and pistachio. The interior walls were covered 
with bas-reliefs and inscriptions. Near it, another marble palace contained 
his treasures. 

Over all this splendor the storm of disaster was gathering. Nechao 
II was then ruler of Egypt. He was an energetic prince, and had a strong 
army under competent commanders. As soon as he heard that the Medes 
and Chaldeans were at the gates of Nineveh, he resolved on seizing western 
Asia. Early in 608 he crossed the isthmus, and notified the king of Judah 
not to be alarmed on account of his advance. But Josias thought it was 
his duty to take up the cause of the king of Assyria, whose vassal he was. 
He was defeated and slain at Mageddo. Nechao marched to the Euphrates, 
and for two years Syria was once more under the sway of the Pharaohs. 
As he was returning to Egypt he learned that the Jews had taken Joachaz, 



The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 73 

the second son of Josias, as their king. Angry at not having been con- 
sulted in the matter, he deposed the new king, sent him a captive to Egypt, 
and in his stead set up his brother EHakim, to whom he gave the name 
Joakim. 

About this time Nineveh succumbed (606). Its king, it is said, held 
out as long as possible. When he had exhausted every resource of pro- 
visions and munitions he crowded his wives and children together in his 
palace and, rather than fall alive into his conquerors' hands, had himself 
and them burned alive. So complete was the destruction of the city that, 
two centuries later, all recollection of its exact site had been lost. The 
famous Ten Thousand Greeks marched past without noticing it; and 
Xenophon, their leader and historian, mentions all the neighboring towns, 
but says nothing of Nineveh. A little later Alexander, vv^hen he had fought 
his last great Lattle in the neighborhood, sought a name already famous 
which he might give to his victory, and he chose Arbcla. Only traditions 
retained som.e m.emory of the city that had disappeared. A mound there 
was called Nebbi-Ynus (Tomb of Jonah), and another Tellet-Tubeh 
(Hill of Repentance). In the Middle Ages a small Arab city, Mossul, 
arose on the cppcsite bank of the Tigris. Men had to wait more than 
twenty-four and a half centuries before the remains of Sennacherib's and 
Assarhaddon's capital were discovered under ground. 

The destruction of Assyria was a deliverance for Asia. The empire 
had lasted more than six centuries, but civilization owes it absolutely noth- 
ing. It had borrowed everything from Egypt and Chaldea, both arts and 
sciences, and remained satisfied with ravaging the world. Its providential 
part was its being a scourge in God's hands to chastise His faithless people. 

The New Chaldean Empire and the Jews. — The ruined realm was 
divided between its allied conquerors, Media taking Assyria, and Chaldea 
claiming Syria and Mesopotamia. Nechao II hastened to defend his 
recently acquired Asiatic possessions. Near the Euphrates he was met 
by the prince-royal of Babylon, Nabuchadrezzar, beaten at Carchemish, the 
ancient Hittite capital, and pursued as far as the Egyptian frontier. Then 
came the kingdom of Judah's crowning misfortunes. On his way Nabu- 
chadrezzar besieged, captured and pillaged Jerusalem, whose king was a 
creature of Nechao. Part of the treasures of the Temple were carried off 
to furnish the sanctuaries of Babylon. Tribute had to be paid, and a 
certain number of the inhabitants were deported to Chaldea, among them 
the prophet Daniel, then a mere lad (605). 

This was only the beginning. At that time Jeremiah announced that 
Nabuchadrezzar, soon to ascend the throne, would destroy the kingdom, 



74 The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 

and that the Jews would spend seventy years in bondage, after which it 
would come Chaldea's turn to disappear, when God would restore His 
people. Judea might have lived in peace under Chaldean rule if, in spite 
of Jeremiah's repeated warnings, the advocates of alliance with Egypt had 
not gained the upper hand. Urged by Nechao, Joakim revolted. At first 
Nabuchadrezzar, now king, was satisfied with having the Jewish country 
ravaged by ever jealous neighbors, Moabites, Ammonites and Syrians, 
united with bands of Chaldeans. Joakim was succeeded by his eighteen- 
year old son, Jechonias. Then Nabuchadrezzar himself attacked Jeru- 
salem. After a siege of three months the king had to surrender. He 
was taken to Babylonia along with the royal family and the nobility, in 
all ten thousand men. Among them were the prophet Ezechiel and Mar- 
dochai, Esther's uncle (598). A third son of Josias, Zedechiah (Sedecias), 
was made king, and he was the last of Judah. He was more weak than 
wicked. During his reign Jeremiah continued his warnings against 
resistance to Babylon, but in vain. Their alliance with Egypt was to be 
once more and finally disastrous to the Jews. Uahibri (Apries), a bold 
and enterprising man, was now Pharaoh. He prevailed upon Tyre, 
Ammon and Judah to rise against Babylon. Nabuchadrezzar at once 
invaded Judea and laid siege to Jerusalem (February 15, 589). The city 
fell into his hands, the king was captured while trying to escape to the desert, 
his children were murdered in their father's presence, his eyes were put out 
and he was sent a captive to Babylon. The Temple was pillaged and 
burned, the walls were destroyed, and the city was razed to the ground. 
Whatever treasures were left were taken to Chaldea, as were nearly all 
the people except the poor, whom Jeremiah remained to comfort. Such 
was the sequel of David's conquests and Solomon's glory. 

Babylon's Brief Ascendancy. — Meanwhile Tyre was holding out 
against the Chaldeans, who blockaded it for thirteen years. Its inhabi- 
tants abandoned the continental part of the city and shut themselves up in 
the island. They yielded only in 574, and then all Phoenicia submitted to 
Nabuchadrezzar. It was now Egypt's turn to renew the struggle with the 
Chaldeans. This very year war was begun. Apries had a good fleet, 
with which the Babylonians could not cope; therefore the Egyptians won 
brilliant successes in the beginning. Their Greek vessels beat the Phoeni- 
cians near Cyprus, and captured Sidon, Byblos and Arad. Apries, over- 
exultant at his victories, called himself the happiest king who had ever 
lived, "inaccessible even to the wrath of the gods." Ezechiel represents 
him as a large crocodile lying in the middle of the Nile and exclaiming: 
"The river is mine, for I made it." But his vanity did not keep the Chal- 



The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 75 

dean armies from penetrating into Egypt and reaching the first cataract. 
They were driven back; but then a miHtary revolt broke out. Apries 
was cast into prison and soon turned over to the populace of Sais, who 
strangled him and put in his place Ahmes, the leader of the mutineers. 
Nabuchadrezzar returned and compelled the usurper to become tributary 
to him. 

In the latter part of his reign Nabuchadrezzar gave much attention 
to rebuilding Babylon and fortifying its approaches. He reconstructed 
the canals, reservoirs, walls and temples; and as workmen he had the 
captives from all countries with whom he had repeopled Chaldea. But 
his successes had made him proud, and for this God punished him with a 
strange humiliation. He was seized with a form of madness which made 
him imagine he had been changed into a beast; he lived in the open air, 
feeding on hay like an ox, and letting his hair and nails grow without re- 
straint. When he recovered he acknowledged the greatness of the true 
God. He died in 561 B. C, and with him disappeared the ephemeral 
splendor of the new Chaldean empire. There is no certainty as to who 
were actually his successors, one of whom was a usurper; but the last of 
them was a member of his family, Nabonidas (555-538), who towards the 
end of his reign associated with him Balthazar H (Belshazar). 

Rise of the Medo- Persian Empire. — The power that was to lay 
Babylon low had been growing in the meanwhile. The Medes did not 
remain satisfied with their share of Assyria. Beyond the Euphrates was a 
region, Asia Minor, which they coveted. Its peoples were made up of 
many races. To the northeast, in the mountains, lived tribes of miners 
and smelters who furnished iron, copper and tin to all the kingdoms of the 
Orient. They were the Muski, the Tabals and the Chalybs. Farther 
south, in the Taurus and Anti-Taurus mountains, were the descendants 
of those Khetas (Hittites) who had m.enaced Egypt in the time of Ramses 
II. Their old allies, the "peoples of the sea," inhabited the rest of the 
peninsula and had founded more or less powerful States, such as Dardania, 
Phrygia, Bithynia and Mysia. In the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. 
Lydia, whose capital was Sardes, preponderated. There money was first 
coined. On the western coasts and the islands of the iEgean Sea Greek 
colonies, Miletus, Smyrna, Phocasa, etc., had taken the place of the Phoeni- 
cian establishments. The Medes, after having subdued Armenia, pene- 
trated into Asia Minor. There they came into conflict with the Lydians, 
and the struggle lasted six years with equal chances. At last an eclipse of 
the sun, occurring during a battle, filled both armies with terror, and peace 
was concluded between Alyattes of Lydia and Cyaxares of Media (595 



76 The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 

B. C). The river Halys was the dividing line. Cyaxares died soon 
afterwards (584), leaving to his successor, Astyages, instead of a small 
corner in the mountains, a vast territory extending over a length of nearly 
two thousand miles. The latter led a peaceful life, more devoted to the 
chase than to war. 

But, while the Medes were growing weak from repose, their tributaries 
the Persians, confined within a less favored region, to the southeast of Elam, 
retained their warlike ways. Their kings were descended from Achimenes, 
who had been their chief in the already remote time of their settlement 
in that region. A legend related by Herodotus tells that Astyages had given 
his only daughter, Mandana, in marriage to the Persian king, Cambyses. 
From this marriage came Cyrus, who was reared at his maternal grand- 
father's court. Later on, having himself becDme king, Cyrus began by 
subduing all the neighboring tribes, and then attacked Media, of whose 
weakness he was aware. Astyages tried to defend himself; but, abandoned 
by his soldiers, he fell into the hands of Cyrus, who seized his kingdom 
(about 550 B.C.). 

The Persians in Lydia. — There then reigned in Lydia the famous 
Croesus, whose luxury, wealth and gsnerosity have remained proverbial. 
His empire comprised Asia Minor west of the Halys. Cyrus became his 
neighbor. It was evident that, sooner or later, he would reach out farther 
west. Something must be done before his power was yet firmly established. 
So as to forestall him, Croesus won over to his cause Nabonidas of Babylon 
and Ahmes of Egypt. Having had the Lelphic oracle consulted, he re- 
ceived this answer: "If you go to war, you will destroy a great empire." 
He could not imagine that there was question of his own, and, without 
waiting for his allies, he marched against Cyrus. The Persian king went 
to meet him. They fought until dark, and Croesus, seeing the enemy hold 
his ground, withdrew. He thought winter would keep his adversary from 
advancing, and counted on having time to reinforce his weakened army. 
But Cyrus, in spite of the season, marched straight upon Lydia. Croesus 
held against him what remained of his troops, a magnificent cavalry armed 
with spears. Cyrus hesitated to attack. He had recourse to strategy; 
having had his camels that bore the baggage unloaded, he mounted his 
horsemen on them, and of these formed his vanguard. The sight and 
odor of those beasts so frightened the horses of the Lydians that the latter 
balked and refused to advance. The Lydians had the courage to dis- 
mount and fight on foot; but they were crushed. Soon afterwards Sardes 
was captured, and the empire of Croesus passed to the Persians. It was 
then that the inhabitants of one of the Lydian cities, Phocaea, emigrated 



The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 77 

and, after many adventures, founded Massilia (Marseilles). As the other 
allied kings did not move, Cyrus turned his arms in another direction. 
During four or five years (545-539) he was engaged in the conquest of 
the regions situated east of Persia and Media, namely, Bactriana, Mar- 
giana, Sogdiana and Aria. He penetrated as far as the frontiers of India. 
When he returned thence, he decided to attack Babylon. 

Description of Babylon. — Nabuchadrezzar had surrounded the city 
v^^ith a formidable display of defence. At the place where the Tigris comes 
nearest to the Euphrates, from one river to the other he had constructed 
a rampart flanked on both sides by four or five trenches. To the west 
and east of the city an ingenious system of drains enabled the country to be 
inundated. The city itself, the vaste&t that has ever existed, presented the 
appearance of a gigantic square intersected diagonally by the Euphrates. 
The outside surrounding wall, along which was a trench, was forty-nine 
yards high and twenty-nine thick, had brass double gates, and inclosed an 
area of over three hundred square miles. It really encompassed several 
cities, including Cutha to the northeast and Borsippa to the southwest. 
Two or three miles farther in, a lower inclosure hemmed in not only the city 
properly so called, but a rather large extent of cultivated fields to furnish 
the besieged city with provisions. There, on both banks of the Euphrates, 
lay the old city, almost as large as London. The streets, lined with three- 
or four-story houses, cut one another at right angles. The brick and pitch 
quays, the work of Nabonidas, rose perpendicularly on both banks, were 
provided with towers like real fortresses, and communicated by gates and 
stairways with the streets. A single bridge united the two banks. Every 
evening its floor, made of cedar beams, was raised. At the entrance to and 
exit from the city a gate closed the river. 

To the north the kings had built their "royal city" surrounded by 
three walls of diff'erent heights, that outside being the highest and most 
ornate and over six miles long. They inclosed the recently built palace 
of Nabuchadrezzar whose shapeless ruins cover thirty-two acres and 
which for centuries furnished the Arabs with an immense brick quarry. It 
was with the materials taken from Babylon that the cities of Ctesiphon, 
Seleucia and Bagdad were built. There also were the "hanging gardens," 
a collection of galleries and terraces, supported by hollow pillars and 
filled with soil, bearing a forest of rare trees and flowers — the caprice 
of a king who, it is said, wished to console his wife, a Median princess who 
longed for the groves of her own country. Farther north was an enormous 
pyramid v/hose ruins form a square of two hundred yards rising forty yards 
high, the tomb of the god Bel, the sanctuary of Mylitta, "the temple of the 



7 8 The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 

assizes of heaven and earth," where were the oracles, observatory, etc. In 
the space between these monuments and the royal inclosure was the hunting 
park in which the kings of Babylon could indulge in the fancy of letting 
loose and hunting the lions of their menageries. A tunnel under the river 
communicated with other smaller palaces on the right bank. The ancient 
Babel wsis, it is said, at Borsippa, between the first and second inclosures. 
There was a tower there eight stories high, rebuilt by Nabuchadrezzar on 
the site or on the ruins of the tower of tongues. Each story was dedicated 
to a planetary god and painted in his color, black, white, purple, blue, ver- 
milion, silver and gold. 

The Fall of Babylon. — A revolution had placed on the Babylonian 
throne a usurper named Nabonidas. He was a superstitious king and an 
archaeologist. He had devotion only for the forgotten gods, and he robbed 
the provinces of their idols to enrich Babylon with them. He restored the 
abandoned sanctuaries, to the great dissatisfaction of the priests of the other 
temples. All these things made him unpopular. Moreover, he was a sorry 
soldier and a poor general. When he decided to march against Cyrus, he 
arrived just in time to be shamefully beaten. Soon afterwards he was cap- 
tured by the Persians and sent as a captive to Carmania, of which later on he 
was made a satrap. Cyrus's lieutenant, Gobryas, forced the outside walls 
of Babylon almost without striking a blow. But the son of Nabonidas, 
Balthasar, had shut himself up in the royal city and was still holding out 
there. According to Herodotus, Cyrus, despairing of carrying it by main 
force, had recourse to a stratagem. He pretended to be going away and 
went up along the river a certain distance. There his soldiers dug canals to 
dry the Euphrates. Then one night, v/hen he knew the Babylonians were 
enjoying themselves at a feast, he had the river turned into the canals. At 
that moment Balthasar, during carousal, caused to be brought to him the 
sacred vessels carried off from the temple of Jerusalem. Suddenly a man's 
fingers appeared tracing mysterious words on the wall. The troubled king 
sent for his soothsayers, but none of them could explain the inscription. The 
queenmother proposed that Daniel be called in. The words were 
Mene, Tecel, Phares, Chaldaic for "counted, weighed, broken." "The 
meaning is," said the prophet "that God has counted thy royalty, and is 
putting an end to it; that He has weighed thee in the balance and has 
found thee too light, and that thy kingdom will be destroyed and given to the 
Persians." Then Balthasar had Daniel clothed in purple, put a gold collar 
around his neck, and gave him the third rank in the kingdom. That very 
night Cyrus's soldiers entered the city through the dried river bed, and 
Balthasar was slain (538). 



The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 79 

Cyrus and the Jews. — After his victory Cyrus assumed the title of 
king of Babylon. He took great pains to see that no harm was done to the 
inhabitants; and, in order to gain the good will of his new subjects, he had 
the gods restored that Nabonidas had taken from them. Then (536) he 
issued an edict permitting the exiled Jews to return to Palestine. Nearly 
fifty thousand of them, led by a descendant of David named Zorobabel, 
then left Chaldea, carrying with them the vessels that had been taken from 
the Temple. They at once began to rebuild their holy city. Under 
Cambyses this work was stopped through the jealousy of the Samaritans, 
but was resumed and continued ardently under Darius, and in 516 B. C. 
the Temple was completed. In the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus 
Esdras led another large contingent of Jews to Jerusalem and brought 
the people back to the faithful observance of the Mosaic commandments. 
About the same time Nehemias restored the city walls of David; so the 
people recovered its law, its Temple, its city and the full energy of its 
religious patriotism. Judea enjoyed peace under Persian rule. 

After the capture of Babylon, all the old Assyrian empire belonged to 
the Persians; Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine once more changed mas- 
ters. We know nothing of the conqueror's end. He had set out towards 
the east, and disappeared (529). Did he die in his bed, as Xenophon says, 
uttering wise sayings ? Did he die of a wound, as Ctesias relates, three 
days after a battle with the wild tribes of Bactriana .? According to Hero- 
dotus, he had asked in marriage the queen of the Massagetes, Tomyris. 
Rejected, he took out his revenge in war, and gained so great a victory 
that Tomyris's young son, a captive, killed himself in despair. The queen 
took up arms again. A fierce battle was fought, in which Cyrus perished. 
Then Tomyris had a leather bottle filled with blood, and plunged the 
Persian king's head into it, saying: "The victory is mine, but you have 
taken my son from me, and I am going to satiate you with blood." Cyrus 
was a good general, active, courageous and enterprising. He had a spirit 
of forbearance rare in Oriental despots; accordingly, Greek legend makes 
him the ideal monarch, gentle, just, and enlightened. But his true glory 
is his having been chosen by God to be the liberator of His people. 

The Persian Conquest of Egypt — Darius Hystaspis. — He was 

succeeded by his son Cambyses, who undertook to subdue Africa, beginning 
with Egypt (527), the last great monarchy which Cyrus had left standing 
and which fell in a single battle. Then he wished to attack Carthage; but 
for such an expedition he needed a fleet, and this the Phoenicians refused 
to give him. An army sent against the oasis of Ammon perished in the 
sands, and another, sent against the Ethiopians, was decimated by hunger 



8o The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 

and returned in humiliation. Cambyses took his revenge for these reverses 
in cruelties whose victims were the priests of Egypt and his own family. 
He had his brother put to death; he slew his sister; and a rebellion recalled 
him to Asia when a hurt he had received by a fall from his horse carried 
him off (522). 

The rebellion which had broken out was a reaction of the Medes against 
the Persians. A magus named Smerdis, who represented himself to be 
the brother of Cambyses, whom he resembled, led the plot. Seven Persian 
grandees responded to this venture with another conspiracy, stabbed the 
magus to death and proclaimed one of themselves as king. He was Darius, 
son of Hystaspis. The magus's usurpation had shaken the whole empire. 
A recently deciphered cuneiform inscription proves that Darius had to quell 
revolts which broke out one after another in all the eastern provinces; in 
Lydia he was reduced to ordering the assassination of the governor of 
Sardis, Otanes, who was acting as king. Of all these insurrections we have 
details of only that of Babylon, of which Herodotus tells us. It is famous 
on account of the devotedness of Zopyrus, who mutilated himself so as to 
be received by the Babylonians as a victim desiring only vengeance, and who 
then betrayed them. 

With the purpose of assuring the collecting of the taxes and the sup- 
port of the regular troops, Darius divided his vast empire into twenty satra- 
pies. In the north he renewed the war against the Scythians begun by 
Cyrus, so as to keep up the vrarlike ardor of the Persians; but he attacked 
those of Europe, and not of Asia. He passed over the Bcsphorus, crossed 
the Danube on a bridge cf boats built and guarded by Greeks of Asia and 
Thrace, and penetrated the wilcerness in a vain pursuit cf the Scythians. 
The time set for the return to the Ister having passed, the Athenian Mil- 
tiades proposed the breaking of the bridge so as to leave the Persian army 
to perish. Histioeus of Miletus opposed this plan and told the leaders, all 
tyrants of Greek cities, that they would be overthrown if they lost the for- 
eigner's support, and by this advice he saved Darius. When that prince 
returned, he left twenty-four thousand mon in Thrace to complete the con- 
quest of it and effect that of Macedonia. He also sent two expeditions to 
the extremities of the empire (509); one of them subdued Barce, in Cyre- 
naica, and the other the countries drained by the eastern affluents of the 
Indus. 

Character of Meda- Persian Rule. — The Persian empire was then at 
the height of its greatness. From the Indus to the Mediterranean, from 
the Danube and the Araxes to the Indian Ocean and the deserts of Arabia 
and Africa, all obeyed the great king, and he was about to hurl a million 



The Later Ancient Asiatic Empires 8i 

men on Greece. But the next Median wars were to show how much 
weakness lay under that outward semblance of strength. The government 
was a despotism, tempered perhaps in the Medes by the authority of the 
magi, but without any other counterpoise in the Persian empire than the 
great power of the satraps, whose number Darius had imprudently reduced 
to twenty. Moreover, the central power did not take it upon itself to 
administer. Provided the provinces furnished the taxes in money or in 
kind and the required contingents, they retained their independence. 
The great Asiatic courts have always leaned to effeminacy and luxury. 
The Persians let themselves be corrupted like their predecessors, in spite 
of the superiority of their religion, which taught that life must be a continual 
struggle against evil. They raised few monuments. Yet the ancients 
vaunted the magnificence of Ecbatana, the city of the seven inclosures, and 
modern travelers have been able to contemplate the imposing ruins of 
Persepolis, called by the Arabs Tchil-Minar or the forty columns. They 
are over two yards in diameter and twenty-five high. It is supposed that 
the tomb of Darius has been discovered on Mount Rachmed, near Per- 
sepolis. 



CHAPTER V 



Ancient Independent Greece 



The Land and the People. — If we extend the name to the various 
felonies established by the Hellenic race, then ancient Greece was spread 
ever an enormous extent of territory, from the Mediterranean shores of 
Gaul and Spain to the extreme eastern coast of the Black Sea, at the foot 
uf the Caucasus mountains. It was not a country forming a clearly de- 
fined geographical unity, like the Italy of the Romans, but comprised the 
whole series of tracts of which the Greeks had taken possession. Greek 
cities studded the coasts of Scythia and Thrace, as well as those of Asia 
Minor; they swarmed in the islands of the T^gean Sea as well as in the 
rocky peninsula which hems in that sea on the west; they prospered in 
the Delta of the Nile and in the oasis of Cyrenaica; they encircled Sicily 
and southern Italy; and they spread out towards the setting sun on the 
shores of modern France and Spain. But, in the more restricted meaning, 
by Greece was understood the peninsula situated south of a line running 
from the mouth of the Thessalian Peneus to the gulf of Ambracia (now 
Arta). In reality Greek history was made wherever there were Greek 
establishments, and these were to be found in many very different regions. 
The chief scene of the events we have to relate was the basin of the iEgean 
Sea; but the Greeks of the other countries, and especially those of southern 
Italy and Sicily, also played a part and furnished a compliment to civili- 
zation. 

The geographical situation of the lands washed by the iEgean, the 
ramifications of the mountains hiding so many valleys between their ridges, 
the deep indentations of the coasts, and the astonishing varieties of cli- 
mate, partly explain the originality of character of the Greek race, the 
institutions which it adopted and developed, and the important place which 
it occupies in the history of mankind. Greece in the limited sense is a 
very small country; its area, including the islands, is less than that of 

Portugal; but its shore line is so broken that in length it exceeds that of 
82 



Ancient Independent Greece 83 

the whole Iberian peninsula. In the north, if we comprise Macedonia, it 
is connected with the mass of those eastern Alps that hem in the Danube 
valley on the south; southward it sends three projections of land into the 
Mediterranean; on the west, the sea separates it from Italy, and from Asia 
on the east. 

As far as we can penetrate the darkness of those ancient times, the 
first inhabitants of Greece were the Pelasgians and the laones (lonians), 
members of the great Aryan race. The former, whose tribes covered Asia 
Minor, Greece and Italy, were the first to bring civilization into those 
regions. They left behind them everywhere in their monuments indes- 
tructible proofs of their power and activity; but they disappeared so com- 
pletely that no certain tradition of them remains. There are still to be seen 
at Mycenae, Tiryns and Argos remains of cyclopean structures that are 
attributed to them. Yet Greece derived much of the foundations of its 
civilization from non-Aryan peoples, such as the Semite Phoenicians and 
the Hamite Egyptians. They themselves admit this, though vaguely. 
Poetic legends tell of the Egyptian Cecrops landing in Attica and organizing 
its inhabitants into twelve towns, of which Athens later on became the 
capital; he also taught them to cultivate the olive, to extract oil and to till 
the land. It was he, they say, who instituted the laws of marriage and the 
court of the Areopagus, whose equitable decisions prevented unjust quanels. 
The Phoenician Cadmus is said to have done the same for Bceotia, to which 
he brought the alphabet and where he built the Cadmea, the nucleus of 
Thebes. At Argos in the Peloponnesus Danaus introduced some of the 
arts of Egypt, and the Phrygian Pelops settled in Elis, whence his race 
spread over n'^'^rly all the peninsula, which took and retained his name. 
Thus does legend point to early close relations between Greece and the 
trans-Mediterranean lands. 

The Heroic Age and the Trojan War. — Of all the events of that 
remote period the most important to Greece was the invasion of the Hel- 
lenes, who spread from the north of the country, their first sojourn, into 
the other parts of the peninsula, at the expense of the Pelasgians, whom 
they obliterated by absorbing them They are represented as divided mto 
four tribes, the lonians and the Dorians, who at first remained in the shade, 
and the i^^olians and the Achaians, who held the mastery during the period 
called the heroic age. History's time had not yet come, and tradition 
remains satisfied with legends which show us heroes traversing Greece 
to free it from scourges of every sort, brigands, wild beasts and oppressors. 
Devoting their life to combating evil in all its forms, the gratitude of the 
tribes gave them the name and honors of demi-gods; but those heroes 



84 Ancient Independent Greece 

themselves gave v^ay to their passions and abused their strength. Such 
especially were Hercules and Theseus. Popular songs also honored the 
Argonauts and their adventurous expedition to Colchis in search of the 
Golden Fleece; the Seven Chiefs who laid siege to Thebes sullied by the 
crimes of CEdipus and the dissensions of his sons; the Epigoni; the wise 
Minos, and so many other heroes of those fabled times, whose tragic ad- 
ventures have been immortalized by poetry and art. One certain fact, 
if we take it in its general bearing, was the v\^ar that for the first time brought 
Greece into deadly conflict with Asia. Troy was the capital of a powerful 
kingdom estabHshed in northwestern Asia Minor and the last remnant 
of Pelasgian power. Race enmity was intensified by a bloody insult. 
Paris, one of King Priam's sons, smitten by the beauty of Helen, wife of 
the Pelopidan Menelaus, who had given him hospitality, carried her off 
and thus aroused the resentment of all Greece, which took the part of the 
king of Sparta. An immense armament, led by his brother Agamemnon, 
king of Mycene, landed a large army on the coast of Troas. No decisive 
action took place for ten years, and Troy, defended by Hector, Priam's 
son, seemed to be able to resist for a long time yet, even after the hero had 
perished at the hands of Achilles. But the Greeks, who w^ere then called 
Achaeans, feigned withdrawal, and left behind them as an offering a gigantic 
wooden horse which the Trojans took within their walls. It concealed 
in its flanks the bravest of the Greeks. Thus did Troy fall (about 1200 
B.C.). Hecuba and her daughters were carried off into slavery, Priam 
was slain at the foot of the altar, and the Achaian princes who had not 
succumbed, such as Patroclus, Ajax and Achilles, turned towards their 
own country. Terrible misfortunes marked that return. Som.e perished 
on the voyage; others, Hke Ulysses, were for a long time kept from their 
homes by contrary winds; others, like Agamemnon, saw their throne and 
bed occupied by usurpers whose victims they became; lastly, several were 
compelled to go in search of a new country in distant regions, Hke Diomedes 
and Idomeneus. The Iliad and the Odyssey tell us further, with incom- 
parable charm, of those old legends in which the popular imagination 
took delight. 

The Dorian Invasion — Greek Colonies and Institutions. — The 

eighty years following the fall of Troy were filled up with intestine dis- 
sensions that overthrew the old royal houses and made the preponderance 
pass to new peoples. The Dorians, led by the Heraclidae,or sons of Her- 
cules, invaded the Peloponnesus (about iioo B.C.), caught Laconia unde- 
fended, drove the /Eolians from Messenia and the Achaians from Argolis, 
seized Corinth and Megara, and later on marched against Athens, whither 




HELEN OF TROY. 

Helen, the wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta, was carried off by Paris, the 
son of King Priam of Troy. Her husband called an army from various States 
of Greece, and after a siege of ten years captured and sacl^ed the city. Tlie 
fabled beauty of Helen was celebrated by the Greek poet. Homer. 




From the Painting by F. H. Fueger. 
THE DEATH OF HECTOR. 
Hector, tlie bravest son of Priam, King of Troy, bade good-bye to his wife, 
Andromache, and his son before going out to meet his death at the hands of 
Achilles, who dragged his dead body three times around the walls ol iroy. 



Ancient Independent Greece 85 

the fugitives had withdrawn. An oracle promised victory to the party 
whose king would perish. Codrus, king of Athens, entered* the enemy's 
camp in disguise, and met death there; whereupon the Dorians at once 
withdrew. These revolutions and all those that followed produced several 
currents of emigration, and there came into existence on the coasts of Asia 
Minor, Africa, Sicily and Italy, as it were, a new Greece that was for a long 
time richer and more beautiful than the mother country. It was in the 
Asiatic colonies, in contact with the old organizations of the Orient, that 
was first established the civilization whose resplendent home Athens became 
later on. In spite of its dispersion on so many shores and of its division 
into so many States, the great Hellenic family retained its national unity 
through community of language and religion, through the fame of certain 
oracles, especially that of Delphi, to which men came from all parts of the 
Greek world, and through general institutions, such as the Amphictyonic 
gatherings and the public games. The most famous of the former assem- 
bled at Thermopylae and Delphi; there the deputies of twelve peoples dis- 
cussed the common interests and chastised offences against the rehgion 
or honor of Greece. The public games at which victory was most sought 
after, those of Olympus, recurring every four years, served as the basis of 
chronology, because, beginning with the year 776 B. C, the name of him 
who won the prize in the Stadium race was inscribed in the public register 
of the Elians, and because, to mark the dates of events, men accustomed 
themselves to taking those of these victories. 

Early Political Organization. — In that land of mountains in which 
nature makes struggle the condition of life, over that land which the free 
ocean envelopes, there ever breathed the spirit of independence which still 
is breathed there and which is found in its oldest traditions. The kings 
are but the military heads of their peoples. If they judge, it is with the 
concurrence of the elders; their revenues are voluntary gifts, a larger 
share in booty and sacrifices, a double portion of the victims' flesh — no 
trace of that servile adoration bestowed on the monarchs of the Orient; 
no exclusive clergy, no holy book, like the Bible, the Vedas and the Avesta, 
consequently no fixed doctrines enchaining the mind. Every head of a 
family was priest in his own house. The aristocracy did not form a caste. 
The nobles were the strongest, the most agile, the bravest, and it was because 
they possessed these qualities that they were regarded as sons of the gods. 
Between them and the people there was no impassable barrier, and no 
one lived slothfully on the glory of his ancestors; every man made his own 
place for himself, at first by physical strength, and later on by intellect. 
How far we are from the Orient in which the gods and their representatives, 



86 Ancient Independent Greece 

priests and kings, reigned supreme! Here man commanded; everything 
was to be movement, passion, unbounded desires, bold efforts — Prometheus 
broke his chains and stole Heaven's fire, life, thought. Below the nobles 
constituting the king's council, and in baitle the line of war chariots, was 
the multitude of free men who formed the assembly gathered around the 
circle of polished stones where the chiefs sat with the prince, in the middle 
of the public square. If they took no part as yet in the deliberations, they 
heard all grave questions discussed, and by their favorable or contrary mur- 
murs influenced the decision. Thus, from the most remote period, Greece 
was accustomed to public assemblies, and the necessity of convincing before 
commanding sharpened that people's wits. The condition of the slave 
was mild— he was a servant in the family. When the old shepherd Eumeus 
met his master's son, he kissed his brow and eyes, and the dying Alcestis ex- 
tended his hand to his female slaves in a last adieu. 

Private Life of the Greeks. — The family was better ordered than with 
the Orientals, the Jews alone excepted. Polygamy was prohibited, and if 
the Greek wife was still purchased, she often already possessed the severe 
dignity of the Roman matron. To her belonged the domestic cares. The 
king's daughters went for water to the well, like the beautiful Nausicaa, and 
Andromache fed Hector's horses. The Greek loved neither long repasts nor 
gross pleasures, and drunkenness never. Scarcely had he given palin nour- 
ishment to his body when he sought games, exercise, dancing, and bards to 
sing of heroes' glory to him. If a stranger came to his door, he would be 
received without any indiscreet curiosity, for the guest was Jupiter's messen- 
ger. His anger was terrible; on the battlefield he did not spare the stricken 
enemy; yet he had no hate that was not appeased with presents and prayers, 
"those lame, but indefatigable daughters of the great Jove who follow 
insult to heal the ills it has caused and who know how to move the hearts 
of the brave." If he needed friends, every warrior had a brother in arms, 
and devotedness was the first law of those indissoluble friendships. Ten 
years after his return to Lacedaemon, Menelaus still shut himself up in his 
palace to mourn for the friends wh®m he had lost under the walls of Ilium. 
But, later on, two unfavorable traits of the Hellenic character were to be 
developed, namely, venality, because the Greeks were poor, and because 
the Orient had gold to purchase everything; and trickery, because they 
were surrounded by numerous barbarians and it would be necessary for 
mind to struggle against matter. It will also be seen that, if all the amiable 
and charming qualities just mentioned formed in that people the great- 
ness of the individual, in courage, poetry, art and thought, unfortunately 
they did not bring about the Jasting greatness of the nation. Arnong the 



Ancient Independent Greece 87 

gifts which that privileged race received or adopted we do not find that 
of the political spirit which knows how to reconcile contrary interests and 
to found great States. 

The Religion of the Greeks. — It was at first only the naturalism 
brought by them from the distant regions of Asia that had been the cradle 
of their race. Side by side with legends of heroes and gods we find the 
worship of forests and adoration of mountains, winds and rivers. Agamem- 
non invokes the latter as great divinities, and Achilles consecrated his hair 
to one of them. This naturalism persisted longer than heathenism itself, 
and we still find in modern Greece men who believe in a spirit of the waters. 
But the imaginary and changing forms which nature assumes when it is 
looked at through the night of the mind, very soon become, to faith, real- 
ities which anthropomorphism takes hold of and makes personal gods. The 
physical forces idealized seem to be spirits, and these assume a body. When 
the theodicy of later times had fixed the functions of the immortals, those 
that had fewest adorers were the twelve great gods of Olympus whose chief, 
the modified representative of the old idea of a Supreme Cause, was Jupi- 
ter, who still made the world tremble with his frown. But there were many 
other divinities, since Greek polytheism, divinizing the phenomena of na- 
ture, men's passions, and good and evil things, was led to multiply the gods 
incessantly. These sometimes far from respectable gods were, however, 
considered as the vigilant guardians of justice, and the Furies, inexorable 
ministers of their vengeances, follovved up the guilty, whether living or 
dead. Such was the deification of remorse. And deified heroes followed 
their earthly occupations in the other world. The gods might be appeased 
by offerings and prayers. If they did not exert any great influence on the 
moral development of those believing in them, they did much for art and 
poetry, and they did not arrest philosophical thought. "You will die," 
Prometheus said to them through iEschylus in an age of faith; and one day 
those peoples heard a voice calling to them: "The gods are dead!" 

Sparta and Lycurgus. — We know almost nothing of the history of 
Sparta before the time of Lycurgus. But we see that the Spartans, far from 
numerous in the midst of a people that had not emigrated at the time of the 
conquest, must, so to say, have had to remain under arms, like an army 
encamped in a hostile country. The Dorians concentrated around Sparta 
and alone formed the State, since they alone had the right to take part in the 
assemblies in which the laws were made and to fill the public offices. They 
had two classes of subjects, in the open cities the Laconians, possessing 
civil rights, and in the rural districts the Helots or slaves of the glebe, 



88 Ancient Independent Greece 

obliged to labor and harvest for their masters. As regards the Spartans 
composing the dominant race, they were equal among themselves. Yet 
this equality was gradually disturbed. Powerful families raised themselves, 
while others lost their estates; whence came troubles in the city and weak- 
ness outside. One man undertook to stop this premature decay, by reviv- 
ing ancient manners. That man was Lycurgus (before Boo B. C). 

The widow of King Polydectes, his brother, had offered him her hand 
and the Spartan throne if he would put his nephew, Charilaos, to death. He 
refused, and the grandees, irritated at the wisdom of his administration 
during the young prince's minority, forced him into exile. He traveled for 
a long time, studied the laws of other peoples, and returned to Lacedaemon 
after an absence of eighteen years, bringing with him Homer's poems. The 
Pythia of Delphi supported with her religious authority the reforms which 
he proposed and which the Spartans, weary of their dissensions, received 
with favor. His political laws upheld the laws established between the 
Spartans as the ruling people and the Laconians as their subjects. These 
laws regulated the rights of royalty, which was divided between two royal 
houses, of the senate, composed of twenty-eight members sixty years old at 
least, of the general assembly, which could adopt or reject the proposals 
made by the senate and the kings, and lastly of the college of ephors, annual 
magistrates perhaps instituted by Lycurgus, but whose great power dates 
from a later time. The two kings were invested, by hereditary right, 
with the religious functions, the command of the armies, and the duty of 
seeing to the carrying out of the decrees formulated by the senate and 
accepted freely by the assembly of the people. 

The object of his far more remarkable civil laws was to establish equal- 
ity between all citizens. To this end he divided the land into thirty-nine 
thousand plots, only nine thousand of which, but far larger than the others, 
were for the Spartans. The great difficulties attending this arrangement 
brought on a riot in which Lycurgus was wounded; but it succeeded. 
The Spartans' estates he made a sort of inalienable military fiefs; but as 
war was constantly diminishing the number of Spartans, who were only 
a thousand in the time of Aristotle, it followed that great wealth accumulated 
in a small number of families. As the Laconians, on the contrary, could 
form alliance with foreigners, they increased in numbers, their possessions 
diminished, and there came a time when only very few of them were rich, 
while the number of the poor was enormous; whence arose revolutions 
that disturbed the later days of Sparta. To maintain equality, Lycurgus 
forbade luxury and gold and silver money; and he instituted public re- 
pasts at which there was always the strictest frugality. At the same time 
he forbade the Spartans to engage in trade, the arts and literature, and 



Ancient Independent Greece 89 

subjected all citizens to the same exercises, for he proposed only a single 
object for their whole life, preparing and furnishing robust defenders 
to the country. The same principle guided the education of children, who 
belonged much more to the State than to their parents. The deformed 
infant was put to death. To the others violent exercise, imposed even 
on girls, gave strength and agility, and only two sentiments were inculcated 
on them, respect for the aged and for the law and contempt of suffering 
and death. 

In the eighth and seventh centuries (743-723 and 685-668) Sparta 
completed the conquest of Laconia and eflFected that of Messenia. Some 
of the Messenians, preferring exile to slavery, emigrated and founded 
Messena in Sicily. These and other victories bore afar the name and fame 
of the Spartans, who, in the sixth century B. C, were regarded as the 
strongest and most formidable of the Greek peoples. 

Athens — Draco and Solon. — After the death of Codrus, Athens 
abolished royalty, and substituted for it perpetual archonship (1045 B. C). 
This form of government was made decennial in 752, annual in 653, and 
then divided between nine magistrates. A government so divided could 
not prevent the excesses of the Eupatridian aristocracy or the schemes of 
ambitious men. Draco's too severe legislation, which punished every 
crime with death, was not accepted, and the troubles continued. In 594 
Solon, famous for his poems, was entrusted with reforming the laws and the 
constitution. He began by facilitating the payment of debts and setting 
debtors at liberty, but refused the division of the land which the poor de- 
manded, his object being to abolish an oppressive aristocracy, but not to 
establish what we would now call a radical democracy of peasant pro- 
prietors. He divided the people into four classes according to property. 
To belong to the first it was necessary to have an income of five hundred 
medimni (^85); to the second four hundred; to the third three hundred; 
and the Thetae were those who had a lower revenue. The citizens of the 
first three classes were alone declared eligible for public office, but all 
had the right to attend the assemblies of the people and to sit in the courts. 
The nine archons, the supreme magistrates of the State, could not hold 
military offices. The senate was composed of four hundred members 
chosen by lot from the first three classes, and subject to a severe ordeal; 
every proposal to the public assembly had to be previously discussed 
by it. The people confirmed the laws, nominated to the offices, deliberated 
on State affairs, and filled the courts to pass judgment on the great 
trials there. The Areopagus, made up of ex-archons, and the supreme 
court for capital cases, looked after morals and the magistrates; it could 



9© Ancient Independent Greece - 

even set aside the decisions of the people. This constitution was, then, 
a clever mingling of aristocracy and democracy in which the management 
of public affairs was entrusted to the enlightened citizens. In his '^ivil 
laws Solon encouraged work and, unlike Lycurgus, never sacrifice<*- ihe 
man to the citizen, morality to politics. 

The Pisistratidae, Clisthenes and Themistocles. — After having 
given his laws, the lawgiver of Athens went abroad to consult the wisdom of 
the old nations of the Orient. When he returned (565), he found Athens had 
assumed a master. The parties he had aimed to suppress had reappearec*, 
and from these fresh struggles had come the tyranny of Pisistratus, who, 
without abolishing the constitution, knew how, as popular favorite and 
leader of the democracy, to exert in the city an influence which annulled that 
of the magistrates; a mild tyranny, moreover, devoid of violence and friend- 
ly to literature and art. In 560 he succeeded, by pretending that a conspir- 
acy was on foot to assassinate him, in having a bodyguard given to him. 
Twice exiled, he was twice recalled, and retained power until his death. 
His usurpation he had honored, if not legitimatized, by an able and pros- 
perous administration. His two sons, Hipparchus and Hippias, succeeded 
him (528) and ruled together; but when Hipparchus, in 514, was murdered 
by Harmodius and Aristogiton, Hippias became a cruel tyrant. The 
powerful family of the Alcmaeonidae, which had fled from Athens, thought 
the time opportune for overthrowing the last of the Pisistratidae. They 
bribed the Pythia of Delphi, who prevailed upon the Spartans to support 
them. Aided by a Dorian army, they in fact returned to Athens and com- 
pelled Hippias to flee to the Persians (510). Clisthenes and Isagoras, 
leaders of the people and of the grandees respectively, proscribed each 
other in turn. At last the former gained the upper hand, in spite of the 
aid which Sparta sent to his rival; and, to reward the people for having 
supported him, he made the constitution more democratic and established 
ostracism, a measure which consisted in sending into exile for ten years, 
as dangerous to the city, any citizen whose name was inscribed on at least 
six thousand voting shells (ostraka). Now mistress of Euboea, the Thra- 
cian Chersonnesus and the island of Lemnos, which Miltiades had con- 
quered, Athens was already a maritime powxr; and so as to increase its 
strength, Themistocles had two hundred ships built with the proceeds 
of the Laurion silver mines. This fleet was soon to save Athens and Greece. 

First Medo- Persian War — Battle of Marathon. — Darius had under- 
taken his expedition into Scythia and subdued Thrace without causing 
the Greeks to be alarmed at that formidable neighbor, who would inevit- 



- Ancient Independent Greece 91 

ably be tempted to reach his hand over their country. An unexpected 
event gave occasion to the struggle. The Greeks of Asia, subject to the 
Persians, tried to throw ofF the yoke; and as Miletus, a colony of Athens, 
was the centre of the movement, it asked the parent State for aid which 
Sparta had refused to grant. Athens gave vessels and a land force which 
aided in the capture and burning of Sardes (500). A defeat, suffered while 
returning from this expedition, made the Athenians disgusted with the war, 
the weight of which fell upon the lonians, who were vanquished in a naval 
battle. Miletus having been retaken and all the Greek cities of Asia 
brought back under the yoke, a Persian army commanded by Mardonius 
passed over into Europe to chastise the allies of the rebels. 

This fleet having been destroyed by a storm near Mount Athos, while 
the Thracians inflicted heavy losses on the land army, Mardonius returned 
to Asia. A second expedition, led by Datis and Artaphernes, and directed 
by the traitor Hippias, made its way by sea through the Cyclades, which it 
subdued, and landed one hundred thousand Persians at Marathon, where 
ten thousand Athenians and one thousand Plataeans, commanded by Mil- 
tiades, by their heroic courage, saved their country and the liberty and 
civilization of the world (490). The Spartans failed to share in the glory 
of this decisive battle, to which they had been invited, by allowing a local 
superstition to delay their departure from home. They reached the scene of 
action only to learn of the result. Among the enormous number of invaders 
slain on that glorious seashore plain of Attica was Hippias. The Persian 
fleet, which tried in vain to surprise Athens, returned in humiliation to Asia. 
The hero of that great day, Miltiades, intrusted with subduing the Cyclades, 
failed before Paros, and, accused of treason, was condemned to pay a fine 
that was far above his means. He died in prison of his wounds. Then 
Themistocles wielded the chief influence in Athens. He saw that the Per- 
sians would renew their effort, and, taking advantage of an insurrection in 
Egypt, which compelled Darius to postpone his revenge, he used all the 
resources of Athens to increase its fleet. 

Second Medo-Persian War — Salamis and Plataea. — ^When Xerxes, 
who succeeded Darius in 485, had, brought Egypt back to obedience, he 
moved his immense empire so that he might himself lead an awe-inspiring 
invasion into Greece. His armament is said to have consisted of a million 
men and twelve hundred ships. Having reached Abydos after the long 
journey from Susa, he crossed the Hellespont on a bridge of boats, and to 
punish Athos, as he said, he had a canal cut that dispensed his fleet from 
rounding that dangerous promontory. Thrace, Macedonia and Thessaly, 
inundated with his troops, submitted, and he encountered resistance only 



92 Ancient Independent Greece 

at the narrow pass of Thermopylae, between the mountains and the strait 
separating Eubcea from the mainland. There he was held at bay by the 
Spartans under their king, Leonidas, until a traitor showed him a pass over 
the mountain. All the Spartans then withdrew except three hundred 
heroes, every man of whom died fighting with their king but one, who 
carried the news to the Laconian capital. A passage having been thus 
forced, the Greek fleet could no longer remain at Artemisium, north of 
Eubcea, where it had taken its station, but withdrew to Salamis, near 
-Athens. Central Greece and Attica were laid bare to the invaders. The 
Athenians deserted their city and took refuge on the island behind the 
fleet. Xerxes entered and wrought havoc in Athens. He thought the 
war was ended; but Athens was now on the vessels and the island hill 
overlooking them. By means of clever stratagems Themistocles kept the 
ships together in a favorable position and tempted Xerxes to attack him 
and stake all on a naval engagement. The passage was far too narrow for 
all the Persian vessels to be brought into action at once, so the Greeks met 
and destroyed them piecemeal. From his throne on a mainland elevation 
the great king witnessed the defeat and ruin of his fleet in the battle of 
Salamis (480). Six months after having passed over it as a conqueror, he 
recrossed the Hellespont as a fugitive. But he had left three hundred 
thousand men behind him, under the command of Mardonius. One-third 
as many Greeks mustered at Plataea under the orders of the king of Sparta, 
Pausanias, and of that great horde of barbarians there escaped only a mere 
handful that had withdrawn before the battle. On the same day the Greek 
fleet won a complete victory at Mycale, on the Asiatic coast (479). Thus 
was the continent purged and the sea swept of the invaders. Athens was 
now mistress of the waters. 

End of the Medo- Persian Wars. — ^The chief honor for resistance to 
the Persian invasion belonged to Athens. Alone it had conquered at 
Marathon with Miltiades; at Salamis it was Themistocles who had again 
wrung victory by forcing the allies to conquer in spite of themselves. The 
glory of Mycale belonged to it almost wholly, and it had shared in that of 
Plataea. Sparta could point only to the im.mortal but vain devotedness of 
Leonidas. The treason of King Pausanias, whom the ephors had sent into 
Thrace to drive out the Persian garrisons there, and who treated secretly 
with Xerxes, completely disgusted Lacedaemon with that war. Athens, 
remaining alone at the head of the allies, boldly accepted the part of the 
great king's adversary. It assumed the offensive itself, and ere long, asking 
of the allies not soldiers, but their vessels and money, it continued the 
struggle in the name of Greece, but for its own account and fortune. It 



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Ancient Independent Greece 93 

subdued Amphipolis and a part of Thrace, to which it sent ten thousand 
colonists, and undertook to free the Asiatic Greeks. Cimon won on one 
and the same day two victories, on land and on sea, near the mouth of the 
Eurymedon (466), which assured to Athens the empire of the waters, and, 
by seizing the Thracian Chersonnesus, it robbed the Persians of the key 
of Europe. 

Ascending the Persian throne in 465, Artaxerxes Longimanus again saw 
the empire's shame increase. A fresh revolt of the Egyptians threatened 
the Persian monarchy with premature dismemberment. The Athenians 
hastened to the aid of the rebels, who resisted for seven years (463-456), 
The exile of Cimon, driven from his country by ostracism, and the rivalry 
between Sparta and Athens, which brought on a first war between the two 
republics and their allies, gave a little respite to the Persians. But Cimon 
was recalled and reconciled the rivals; then he at once began hostilities 
against the common enemy. Two victories, one on land and one on sea, 
near Cyprus and on the Asiatic coast, brought to a glorious ending both his 
military career and the Median wars. The great king, threatened even 
in his own States, had to sign a humilitating treaty which restored liberty to 
the Asiatic Greeks and forbade his fleets to enter the JEge^n Sea, his armies 
to approach nearer the coast than three days' march (449). Cimon died in 
his triumph. 

The Athenians and Pericles. — In this great struggle Athens had been 
admirably served by the great men who succeeded one another at the head of 
her armies and her administration, such as Miltiades, the hero of Marathon; 
Themistocles, who so often mingled cunning with courage; Aristides, more 
just and more straightforward, who served Athens by his virtue as well as by 
his valor, by inspiring the allies with such confidence that they gave him 
their vessels and their treasures, and who, after having administered 
amplest finances then in the world, died without leaving enough to pay his 
funeral expenses, entrusting to the State that duty as well as the dowering 
of his daughter; Cimon, son of Miltiades, and greater than his father, a hero 
who had but one thought, that of fraternally uniting the Greek cities and 
of ruthlessly pursuing the Persians so as to be avenged on them for the 
burning of Athens and its temples. With these illustrious men must be 
associated the Athenian people, a frequently fickle, ingrate and violent mob, 
that, however, expiated its faults and its crimes with its enthusiasm for 
everything that was beautiful and great, with the masterpieces which it 
inspired, with the artists and poets whom it gave to the world and who were 
to plead for it again to posterity. 

One man merits a place of his own in this list of honor, namely. Peri- 



94 Ancient Independent Greece 

cles, son of Xanthippus, the victor of Mycale. He was thought to resemble 
Plsistratus somewhat, and that was why he did not remain long in the shade. 
His birth ranked him among the great, yet he put himself at the head of 
the popular party. By the dignity of his life and by his services as annual 
strategos, he acquired a sovereign influence in the commonwealth, and he 
used it to restrain the evil passions of the people and to develop their good 
qualities. That small city had too vast an empire; in order to assure 
the maintenance of the latter, he sent out numerous colonies that were not 
now, as had been those of the earlier ages, cities independent of the rnother 
country, but fortresses and garrisons that kept in submission, for the 
benefit of Athens, the country in which they were settled. 

Athens as an Intellectual Centre. — Pericles did not wish merely that 
Athens should be rich and powerful; he wished it to be glorious, and to that 
end he called to it the superior men who were then honoring the Hellenic 
race. From everywhere men flocked into the city of Minerva as into the 
capital of intellect. Men wished to take part in those festivities in which 
the highest pleasures of the mind were associated with the most imposing 
spectacles of the religious pomps, the most perfect art and the most smil- 
ing nature. These festivities were not, in fact, like those of the Roman 
plebs, bloody sports of the amphitheatre, spectacles of death, bloodshed and 
corpses, but pious hymns, patriotic songs, and, in the theatre, the representa- 
tion of some incident in the history of the gods or of the heroes. Accord- 
ingly this age, so rightly called the Age of Pericles, saw at Athens one of 
the brightest flashes of civilization that have shone on the world. What 
a time was that in which could be met in one and the same city, side by 
side with Pericles, two of the greatest tragic poets of all ages, namely, 
Sophocles and Euripides; a powerful orator, Lysias; an inimitable narrator, 
Herodotus; the astrologer and mathematician Meton, and Hippocrates, the 
father of medicine; Aristophanes, the foremost of the comic poets of anti- 
quity; Phidias, the most illustrious of its artists; Apollodorus, . Zeuxis, 
Polygnotis and Parrhasius, its most famous painters; and lastly two im- 
mortal philosophers, Anaxagoras and Socrates. If we reflect that that 
same city had just lost iEschylus, and that it was about to have Thucydides, 
Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle, we will not be astonished at its being called 
"the schoolmistress of Greece" and that it has become that of the world. 

We still read the works of those poets, historians and philosophers; 
but of the work of the artists there remains nothing but ruins. Yet when, 
seated on the tribune from which Demosthenes spoke, one contemplates the 
Acropolis and sees what exquisite grace, incomparable beauty, and at the 
same time imposing grandeur, are still retained by those ruins which were 



Ancient Independent Greece 95 

the Parthenon, the Erechtheon and the Propylaea, one is struck with admira- 
tion, even after having had recent recollections of the great monuments 
of Egypt; and one says; Eternal art is there. 

The Pelopoimesian War — First Period. — After Salamis, Athens had 
put itself at the head of a confederacy of the insular and Asiatic Greeks, so 
as to continue the war against the Persians; but as her allies grew weary 
of fighting, she accepted their money in lieu of their troops, and kept up 
the struggle alone in the common interest. The war having come to an end, 
she continued to levy the tribute, under the pretext that it was necessary 
to be ready to repel a fresh invasion. The allies grew weary of ever pay- 
ing for those monuments and those festivities that gave such great splendor 
to their metropolis; and when complaints which they made had been severe- 
ly reprimanded, they made secret supplications to Sparta. Jealous of the 
glory of Athens, Sparta strove to form a continental league whose forces 
it could oppose to those of the maritime and island cities subject to the 
Athenians. From 457 to 431 partial hostilities took place; but a general 
war broke out only after an attack on Plataea, an ally of Athens, by the 
Thebans, allies of Lacedaemon. 

The struggle was at first only an alternation of pillagings. The Spar- 
tans came every spring to devastate Attica, and the Athenian fleet went 
every summer to ravage the coasts of the Peloponnesus. Unfortunately, in 
the third year, a pestilence that mowed down the crowded population of 
Athens carried off Pericles, and demagogues, incapable of mastering the 
mob, took the place of the only man who could lead it (429). Cleon, the 
new favorite of the multitude, gave free rein to the popular passions; and, 
after the revolt of Mitylene (427), one people was seen to condemn another to 
death — a thousand of the rebels perished. From 429 to 426 successes were 
about even; the Boeotians destroyed Plataea, but Potidaea was captured by 
the Athenians. In 424 Brasidas seized Amphipolis, which seemed to give 
the advantage to Lacedaemon; but Demosthenes took Pylos, there called the 
Helots to liberty, and four hundred and twenty Spartans, who let themselves 
be shut up in Sphacteria with the view of recapturing Pylos, were themselves 
forced into that place and made prisoners. The Corinthians, the Boeotians 
and the Megarians, their allies, were beaten. The Athenians in their turn 
were checked at Delion, and Cleon was killed before Potidaea, in which 
action Brasidas also succumbed. The advocates of peace then regained the 
upper hand (42i)> and Nicias caused the treaty to be signed which bears his 
name. 

Second Period of the Peloponnesian War. — This peace upset the 



96 Ancient Independent Greece 

calculations of the ambitious and brilliant Alcibiades, a nephew of Pericles. 
As he had need of war in order to raise himself, he proposed and carried 
by vote a disastrous expedition to Sicily, which might have succeeded if 
he had not been accused of sacrilege and recalled. The unworthy citizen 
took refuge at Sparta and thence aimed mortal blows at his country. The 
siege of Syracuse, indifferently managed by Nicias, ended with the destruc- 
tion of the Athenian fleet and army (413). The chief men were put to death 
by the Syracusans and the soldiers were sold as slaves. This disaster in- 
flicted on the power of Athens a blow from which it did not recover. The 
Spartans, on advice of Alcibiades, fortified Decelia, on the frontier of 
Attica, which they then held as it were besieged, and formed an alliance 
with the Persians. Athens met the storm heroically, displayed unexpected 
resources, and held all its allies to their duty. An event fortunate for 
it was that Alcibiades had made it necessary for him to flee from Sparta. 
Having withdrawn to Asia, he succeeded in making Tissaphernes favorable 
to him by showing him how much it was to the interest of the great king 
to foment a war so useful to the empire. There was an Athenian army at 
Samos; Alcibiades enticed it with the promise of subsidies from Persia, and 
the result was a revolution at Athens, where the democracy was enchained 
by the establishment of a superior council of four hundred members, which 
took the place of the senate, and by an assembly of five thousand chosen 
citizens, substituted for the assembly of the people (411). But the Samos 
army, though it made Alcibiades its general, disapproved of the new govern- 
ment, which fell after four months. The assembly of the Five Thousand 
was retained, however, and the reconciliation of the people and the army was 
sealed by the recall of Alcibiades. Two naval battles won in the Hellespont 
(411), a great victory on land and on sea near Cyzicus in Mysia (410), 
and lastly the capture of Byzantium (408), strengthened the domination of 
Athens over Thrace and Ionia, and Alcibiades returned to his country in 
triumph (407). But in that same year, some checks which he could not 
prevent revived suspicions, and he was deprived of his power and compelled 
once more to go into exile, where he perished at the hands of the Persians. 
The younger Cyrus, brother of King Artaxerxes H, who was already 
meditating the overthrow of that monarch, was at that time commander in 
Asia Minor. For the success of his plans he was counting on the aid of those 
who were regarded as the best soldiers of Greece and of the world, the 
Spartans, and he tendered aid unreservedly to Lysander, who robbed Athens 
of the empire of the sea by the victory of iEgos Potamos (405). This de- 
feat was followed the next year by the capture of Athens, whose walls were 
destroyed, whose navy was reduced to twelve galleys, and whose government 
fell into the hands of an oligarchy of thirty tyrants who indulged in abomin- 



Ancient Independent Greece 97 

able excesses, even putting to death one of their colleagues, Theramenes, 
for having spoken of indulgence. After a few months an exile, Thrasy- 
bulus, who had returned, defeated the tyrants' army and restored the old 
constitution (403). Four years later Socrates drank the fatal hemlock 
potion. He was not only one of the most illustrious victims of superstition 
and intolerance, but his death was a figure of that which Greece by 
its intestine strifes was inflicting on itself. The time of its enslavement 
by a foreign conqueror was not far off. 



CHAPTER VI 



The Macedonian Era 



Sparta's Predominance.— Supremacy in the Greek world had now 
passed from freedom-loving and patriotic Athens to despotic Lacedaemon 
in alliance with the old barbarian enemy of both; and a bad use did Sparta 
make of its power. It did nothing for art, thought or knowledge, and its 
leading men displayed brutal avidity. The younger Cyrus carried out 
his designs. With thirteen thousand Greek mercenaries, he penetrated 
to the neighborhood of Babylon, where he was victorious in the battle 
of Cunaxa; but he perished at the moment of his triumph (401). The 
Greeks, threatened with disaster after the treacherous murder of their 
leaders, succeeded, first under the command of the Lacedaemonian Clear- 
chus, and then of the Athenian renegade Xenophon, in making their way 
across four hundred leagues of country, through the almost impassable 
mountains of upper Mesopotamia, Armenia and Pontus, to the shores 
of the Black Sea. This famous retreat, known as that of the Ten Thousand, 
revealed the weakness of the great empire; accordingly, as early as the 
year 396, Agesilaus, king of Sparta, entertained the idea of conquering it. 
Victorious over the satraps of Asia Minor, and allied with the Egyptians, 
once more in revolt, and having the forces of several barbarian kings at 
his disposal, he was about to anticipate Alexander's expedition by sixty 
years when the Persians found a way of stirring up a war in the very heart 
of Greece against Sparta. At their instigation Corinth, Thebes and Argos 
formed a league into which Athens and Thessaly entered. Agesilaus, 
recalled from Asia, won the battle of Coronaea, which strengthened Sparta's 
domination on land; but the Athenian, Conon, in command of a Phoenician 
fleet, deprived it of the empire of the sea and with Persian gold rebuilt the 
ramparts of Athens. 

The Spartans, uneasy at this revival of a rival, sent Antalcidas to 
negotiate with the great king, to turn over to him the Greeks of Asia, and 
to accept his conditions (387). By Cimon's treaty (449) it was Athens 
that had imposed its own conditions on Persia. Why this change .? It 
was not because Persia was stron2;er, but because there was less virtue 



The Macedonian Era 99 

in Greece. Everything was for sale there, and, as the great king had gold 
in abundance, he purchased everything, orators, soldiers, fleets, cities. 
The fortune of a war no longer depended on the patriotism of the citizens 
and the talents of their leaders, but on a penny more or less of pay, which 
made those mercenaries pass from one camp to another. 

Sparta had brought Greece to the knees of Persia, imagining itself 
remained standing. It appeared to be very strong, in fact, and regarded 
everything as permissible, perfidy as well as violence; one day it was 
Mantinaea it destroyed without any motive, and Olynthus it beat down 
from spite; another time it was patriots it proscribed, so as to rule through 
terrorism. A crowning act of insolence and iniquity at last brought chas- 
tisement. One of its generals, Phoebidas, had taken by surprise, against 
all right, the Cadmea or citadel of Thebes, which was then an ally of Lace- 
daemon; and the Spartans held on to w^hat treason had given them (382). 
The Theban Pelopidas, at the head of some exiles, delivered his country 
and united in a common alliance all the cities of BcEotia. The Spartans 
sent an airmy against them, but Epaminondas crushed it at Leuctra (371), 
and then made bold to carr)^ the war into the Peloponnesus. He made 
his way to the very walls of Sparta, which, however, he did not succeed 
in entering; but so as to keep it in check, he built alongside of it Megal- 
opolis and Messena, two fortresses and camps of refuge for the Arcadians 
and the Messenians (369). Sparta sought everywhere for enemies of these 
new masters of Greece. Against Thebes it stirred up Athens, Persia, 
and Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse; but Epaminondas for the second time 
invaded the Peloponnesus, brought the court of Susa into alliance with 
his country, and created a fleet of one hundred vessels which supported 
Rhodes, Chios and Byzantium in revolt against Athens. Unfortunately 
for Thebes, Epaminondas, having entered the Peloponnesus for the third 
time, perished at the moment of victory at Mantinaea (362). The power 
of Thebes fell with him. 

Philip of Macedon Begins the Conquest of Greece. — Macedonia, 
a vast region to the north of Thessaly and the iEgean Sea, at an early date 
had had kings who, surrounded by barbarous Thracian and Illyrian tribes 
under the mastery of a powerful Greek aristocracy, had as yet played 
but a subordinate part. Before the time of Philip, Alexander's father, 
Macedonia was even in a desperate situation. It paid tribute to the Illy- 
rians, and the haughty intervention of Thebes and Athens in its affairs 
made chaos more chaotic there. Sent to Thebes as a hostage, Philip 
was brought up in the household of Epaminondas, and saw how the genius 
of one man could save a nation. Accordingly, when he came into power, 

LOFC. 



ic^o The Macedonian Era 

in 359, two years sufficed for him to deliver his kingdom from the bar- 
barians and himself from two competitors, with the aid of the phalanx 
which he had organized in accordance with an idea of Epaminondas. 

Having freed Macedonia, he wished to enlarge it and to give it the 
mastery of Greece. The Greek colonies settled on its shores kept it from 
reaching the sea and from having a navy; and he seized them one after 
another. First he made the powerful republic of Olynthus neutral by 
giving it Potidsea, which he had taken; then he seized AmphipoHs, which 
Athens, deceived by his promises, could not aid, and he completed the 
conquest of the country between the Nestos and the Strymon, where he 
found building timber for his ships and the gold mines of Mount Pangaeus, 
which furnished him with a revenue of a thousand talents. He pushed 
farther, penetrated into Thrace, part of which he subdued, and was al- 
ready thinking of laying hands on Byzantium, which was saved by Athens. 
Balked in that direction, he turned in another; he took a hand in the affairs 
of Thessaly, where he overthrew the tyrants of Pherae, then made himself 
the defender of religion against the Phocidians, who had just been con- 
demned by the Amphictyons for having worked a sacred field (First Sacred 
War), and crushed them in a great battle (352). The Thessalians in their 
gratitude opened three of their cities to the avenger of the gods; he gar- 
risoned them and through them held the whole province. He meant to 
go farther and seize Thermopylae; but the Athenians by their vigilance 
disconcerted this project the first time, as they had done the attack on 
Byzantium and another on Euboea. 

Philip and Demosthenes. — The Athenians alone, in fact, were then 
looking after the interests of Greece. They were guided by a great citizen, 
Demosthenes, who used his powerful eloquence to unmask unrelaxingly 
the ambitious designs of the wily king. But his Philippics and Olyn- 
thiacs could not offset cunning supported by force. Olynthus, which 
Demosthenes had endeavored to save, fell, and with it the barrier which 
was Macedonia's greatest impediment (348). Athens, now menaced 
in Euboea and even in Attica, where Macedonian troops came and scattered 
the trophies of Marathon and Salamis, signed a peace treaty recommended 
by Demosthenes himself, who negotiated it with the king. 

While Athens, relying on this treaty, was indulging in festivities, 
Philip passed Thermopylae, overwhelmed the Phocidians, and made them 
give him the vote which they had in the Amphictyonic council (346). 
This step was decisive; for, having bcome a member of the Hellenic 
body, he could make that assembly speak in accordance with his interests 
and turn it into an instrument of oppression. But, as he knew how to 



The Macedonian Era loi 

wait, he stopped almost immediately, so as to shun some dangerous despair 
and turned his arms towards the Danube, which he made the boundary 
of his kingdom, and upon Thrace, where Phocion again prevented him 
from seizing the Greek colonies settled on the Hellespont. While he was 
so far from Thermopylae, his agents were working for him in Greece. 
iEschines caused to be entrusted to him the management of a campaign 
(Second Sacred War) against the Locrians. For the second time religion 
was about to help in ruining that people so far from religious. Philip 
went into central Greece and seized Elataea. Demosthenes at once pro- 
tested; he brought Athens and Thebes together for a supreme effort, 
but Grecian liberty perished at Cheronaea (338). The victor did him- 
self honor by his moderation, and, to give the sanction of law to the mastery 
which he had just seized, he had himself appointed by the Amphictyons 
as commander-in-chief of the Greeks against the Persians. He was about 
to take up again the expedition of Agesilaus, but with far more ample 
resources. Macedonia, in fact, was now a powerful State, extending from 
Thermopylae to the Danube, and from the shores of the Adriatic to the Black 
Sea. Its internal government no longer dreaded either domestic disturb- 
ances or pretenders; the aristocracy, the cause of all the earlier disorders, 
had been won over by the monarch's glory, and by honors and commands, or 
kept in restraint by hostages whom it had had to give so as to form the 
prince's bodyguard out of all the young nobles. But death stopped Philip 
short in the midst of his great plans. He was assassinated by Pausanias, 
one of the nobles, rather, no doubt, at the instigation of the Persians than 
of his wife, the imperious Olympias (336). He was only forty-seven. 

Alexander's Early Triumphs. — Formidable uprisings took place in 
Greece and the conquered countries as soon as it became known that Philip 
had left as his heir a youth of only twenty; but Alexander soon subdued 
Thrace and Illyria, beat the barbarians on both banks of the Danube, and, 
on hearing of the massacre of the Macedonian garrison of Thebes, in thir- 
teen days he made the journey from the shores of the Ister to Bceotia. 
"Demosthenes called me a child," he said, "when I was in Illyria, a young 
man when I arrived in Thessaly; I want to show him at the foot of the walls 
of Athens that I am a man." He took Thebes, slew six thousand of its 
inhabitants, sold thirty thousand of them as slaves, and the terrified Greeks 
gave him at Corinth the title already decreed to his father, that of com- 
mander-in-chief for the Persian war. 

He crossed the Hellespont Vv^ith thirty thousand foot and four thous- 
and five hundred cavalry, defeated at the Granicus one hundred and ten 
thousand Persians, then directed his course along the coast, so as to shut 



I02 The Macedonian Era 

out the agents of Darius from access to Greece and to rob them of the 
means of stirring up troubles there. Darius tried to stop him at Issus in 
Cilicia; but Alexander defeated him (^^^J and, disdaining to pursue him, 
continued the plan he had marked out for himself, that of occupying the 
maritime cities. He did not shrink from spending seven months in the siege 
of Tyre nor from going to lose another year in Egypt, where he sacrificed to 
the gods of the country so as to win its inhabitants, founded Alexandria, 
and made the priests of Amon give him the title of "son of the gods" borne 
by the old Pharaohs (332). 

Destruction of the Persian Empire. — Persia's maritime provinces 
having been conquered, Alexander again traversed Palestine and Syria, 
crossed the Euphrates, whose passage the Persians did not dispute with him, 
the Tigris, which they defended no better, and at last came up with Darius in 
the plain of Arbela, w^here he completely defeated him (331). Now sure 
that no army of the king of Persia could cope with his Macedonians, once 
more he gave that prince time to flee towards his eastern provinces, went 
down to Babylon, where he sacrificed to Bel, whose temple, ruined by Xer- 
xes, he restored, and hastened to occupy Darius's other capitals — Susa, 
which contained immense wealth; Pasargada, the sanctuary of the empire; 
and Persepolis, which he burned, so as to give notice to the whole Orient 
that a new conqueror had come to sit on the throne of Cyrus. With extraor- 
dinary rapidity, either in person or through his generals, he subdued the 
mountaineers of the neighborhood, entered Ecbatana eight days after the 
king had left it, pursued him farther and was about to come up with him 
when three satraps, whose prisoner the unfortunate prince was, cut his 
throat and left in the conqueror's hands only a corpse. Bessus, one of the 
murderers, tried to establish a centre of resistance in Bactriana, but Alexan- 
der did not give him time. He passed rapidly through Aria, Arachosia, and 
Bactriana as far as the Oxus. Bessus, who had withdrawn behind that 
river, was delivered up to him, and a council of Medes and Persians turned 
him over to the brother of Darius, who made him endure all sorts of tortures. 

Alexander spent the winter in those regions, where, on the banks of 
the Jaxartes, he founded a new Alexandria which he peopled with Greek 
mercenaries, neighboring barbarians and invalid soldiers. A satrap 
Spitamenes, an accomplice of Bessus, had renewed the designs of that ambi- 
tious general; but he was pursued like a wild beast and driven back among 
the Massagetse, who sent his head to the Macedonians. The capture of the 
Sogdian rock, the marriage of Alexander to Roxana, daughter of a Persian 
magnate, and the founding of several cities completed the subjugation of 
Sogdiana, where the conqueror left great as well as terrible memories, such 



The Macedonian Era 103 

as the punishment of Philotas and his father Parmenio, in consequence of 
their not having revealed a conspiracy; the murder of CHtus in an orgy 
(327); and that of the philosopher Cahsthenes for a plot to which he was 
a stranger. 

Close of Alexander's Career. — The Persian empire was now a thing 
of the past, the Macedonian empire had taken its place. Alexander found it 
not large enough for him, and to it he wished to add the Indus basin. On 
the banks of the Cophes he met an Indian king, Taxilus, who invoked his aid 
against Porus, another king of that country. His soldiers cut down a whole 
forest so as to build a fleet on the Indus, and Porus was defeated and cap- 
tured. "How would you like me to treat you.?" Alexander asked his 
captive. "As a king," Porus answered. He not only left him his States, 
but even enlarged them, and entrusted him with keeping the country 
obedient to himself. He wished also to cross the Hyphasus so as to pene- 
trate into the valley of the Ganges; but his army refused, and he had to turn 
back. After having marked the extreme limit of his victorious course with 
twelve altars around which he held games, he retraced his steps to the Indus, 
on which he went down to the ocean, on his way subduing the bordering 
tribes, founding cities, dock-yards and harbors, and carefully exploring the 
mouths of the river. He returned to Babylon through the deserts of Ge- 
drosia and Carmania, which no army had yet penetrated. During this 
time Nearchus, his admiral, brought his fleet along the coast and returned 
by way of the Persian Gulf, thus marking for commerce the route of the 
Indies. 

In spite of the numerous reinforcements sent to him from Macedonia 
and Greece, Alexander could not have founded so many cities and kept his 
subjects in obedience if he had not applied a wise policy to the vanquished, 
sacrificing to their gods, respecting their customs, leaving in the hands 
of the natives the civil government of the country, and striving to unite 
vanquished and victors by marriages, for which he had himself set the 
example by espousing Barsina or Statira, daughter of Darius. The mili- 
tary forces alone remained in the hands of the Macedonians; and he reck- 
oned on the beneficent influence of trade creating between East and West, 
between Persia and Greece, interests in common that would make of so 
many different peoples a single formidable empire. But death, vshich sud- 
denly carried him off at Babylon in consequence of his excesses (April 2i, 
323), cut short his great plans. No one after him had sufficient strength 
or authority to continue them. When about to heave his last sigh, he gave 
his ring to Perdiccas. His other lieutenants asked him to whom he was 
leaving his crown. "To the most worthy," he answered; "but I fear I will 



I04 The Macedonian Era 

have a bloody funeral." He was only thirty-three years old, and had 
reigned but thirteen. 

The Age of Alexander. — Great men had further, in the time of Philip 
and Alexander, added to the patrimony of glory left them by their prede- 
cessors. Praxiteles (360-280), the most graceful of the Greek sculptors, 
and the painter Pamphilus, who was Apelles's master, had succeeded 
Phidias, Polycletus and Xeuxis. Already, however, art was declining; 
taste was less pure, style less severe. Too much attention was paid to 
elegance; there was more appeal to the eyes than to thought. If art s'iowed 
symptoms of decay, eloquence and philosophy did not do so. The Athens 
tribune resounded with the impassioned and virile tones of Demosthenes, 
Lycurgus, Hyperides and Hegesippus. ^Eschines, Demosthenes' rival, 
brought to it the movement and brilliancy of his words; Phocion his virtue, 
which is also a powerful weapon with the orator. 

After the death of Socrates, his disciples had scattered. The most 
illustrious of them, however, had returned to Athens. Plato (429-347) 
taught in the gardens of Academos. The Greeks, delighted with the in- 
comparable grace of his language, told that his father was Apollo, and that 
when he was in his cradle the bees of the Hymettus deposited honey on his 
lips. Aristotle (384-322), his pupil, his rival and Alexander's tutor, by 
other merits has attracted to himself the eternal attention of men. Of vast 
and powerful genius, he wished to know everything, the laws of human in- 
telligence as well as those of nature. Philosophy still follows the two ways 
marked out for it by these two great minds — idealist with the one, rational 
and positive with the other. Xenophon, a gentle spirit and a pleasing 
narrator, holds a place only very far from them. 

Dismemberment of Alexander's Empire — Syria and Egypt. — 
Three months after the great conqueror's death his wife Roxana gave birth 
to Alexander Aigos. He had a natural son, Hercules; a bastard brother, 
the imbecile Arrhideus; and two sisters, Cleopatra and Thessalonica. 
His mother, Olympias, was still living. Arrhideus and Alexander Aigos 
were both, after long debates, proclaimed kings. Antipater was put at the 
head of the forces in Europe; Craterus managed the affairs assigned to 
Arrhideus; and Perdiccas became a sort of supreme minister of the empire. 
For twenty years this divided authority produced continual convulsions 
that cost the lives of all the members of the royal family and of most of the 
generals. The empire was rent on the lines of the old nationalities, Egypt, 
Syria, Asia Minor and Macedonia, which became separate realms again 
after the great battle of Ipsus, the last effort made by Antigonus to restore 
authority (301). 



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The Macedonian Era 105 

One of the victors at Ipsus, Seleucus Nicator, founded the dynasty of 
the Seleucides, whose capitals he made Seleucia and Antioch, and whose 
empire embraced all the countries comprised between the Indus and the 
-^gean Sea. His son could not prevent the Gauls from settling in Galatia, 
and, in spite of having God for surname, he saw two kingdoms arise in his 
eastern provinces, that of the Bactrians, which did not last long, and that of 
the Parthians, which renewed the Persian monarchy. Antiochus III the 
Great (224-187) made bold to attack the Romans, who beat him at Ther- 
mopylae (191) and at Magnesia (190), took Asia north of the Taurus from 
him, and made Syria itself a Roman province (64). Under his son, An- 
tiochus IV Epiphanes the Machabees had made Judae an independent 
kingdom (168-143). 

Egypt had better days under the early Lagidae, all of whom bore the 
name of Ptolemy. It was then a powerful State, the centre of the world's 
commerce, and the asylum of literature and science, which had a magnifi- 
cent library at Alexandria; but after some able kings there came in rapid 
succession others who were debauched, cruel and incapable, and in their 
wake foreign interference. Ptolemy Soter (301), for instance, added to his 
kingdom Cyrenaica, Cyprus, Palestine, Coele-Syria and Phoenicia; Phila- 
delphus (285) developed shipping and waged two successful wars, one 
against his brother Magas, governor of Cyrene, the other against the king 
of Syria, who was unable to ejicroach on Egypt; Evergetes (247) penetrated 
into Asia as far as Bactriana and in Africa into the interior of Ethiopia, 
while his lieutenants brought under his sway the coasts of Arabia Felix, so 
as to safeguard the commercial route of India. Philopator (222) inaugu- 
rated decline; Epiphanes (205) accelerated it by placing himself under the 
guardianship of the Romans, who never ceased to interfere in the affairs of 
Egypt from that time until the days of Caesar and Cleopatra, that dangerous 
siren to whom Antony sacrificed his honor, his fortune and his life. Later 
on it will be seen how Egypt became a Roman province. The kingdom of 
Pergamus in Asia Minor, by the will of its last king, had been such since the 
year 129 B. C. 

Macedonia and Greece. — Macedonia did not remain so long indepen- 
dent as Syria and Egypt, but it fell more honorably, for its last two kings had 
the courage to maintain the struggle against Rome, which, by its triumph 
over Carthage, had become the greatest military power in the world. It was 
the posterity of Antigonus, the vanquished of Ipsus, that had secured the 
throne of Macedon and wished, like Philip and Alexander, to add to it the 
mastery of Greece. During the Second Punic War the Romans, by the con- 
quest of Illyria, had secured a foothold on the Greek mainland. Philip of 



io6 The Macedonian Era 

Macedon tried to drive them back into the sea, and to that end concluded a 
treaty with Hannibal (215) which was to assure to him the possession of 
Greece; but a defeat on the banks of the Aous compelled him to return 
hastily to his kingdom, and the Senate, taking advantage of the enmities 
which his ambition had aroused, declared itself the protector of the peoples 
threatened by him. He was so imprudent as to provoke Rome when it was 
rid of Hannibal; and its answer was prompt and terrible. At Cynocephelae 
the legions crushed the phalanx which had conquered Greece and Asia 
(197). His son, Perseus, was no more fortunate at Pydna (168), and in 
146 Macedonia disappeared from the list of nations — ^Alexander's kingdom 
became a Roman province. 

While Alexander's successors were disputing in Asia for the tatters 
of the purple, Greece had tried to recover its liberty. Demosthenes, who 
had remained the soul of the national party, and Athens, which hoped to be 
able once more to break the bond of foreign domination, had stirred up the 
Lamian war. It began well and ended with a disaster. Demosthenes, 
proscribed, took poison and died (322). On the pedestal of the statue 
which his fellow-countrymen afterwards erected in his honor these words 
were engraved : " If thy power had equaled thy eloquence, Greece would 
not now be captive." Phocion perished five years later by order of the 
Macedonians. 

The Greek cities, however, took advantage of Macedonia's troubles to 
recover their liberty; but foreign domination, when withdrawing, left behind 
it, as it were, an impure slime of tyrants in every city. Surrounded by mer- 
cenaries, these men kept the citizens under terror and wrested from their 
cowardice the gold that served to fasten their fetters. One man, Aratus, 
undertook to overthrow these detestable dominations. First he reorganized 
an old confederation of the twelve cities of Achaia, then he freed of their 
tyrants Sicyon (251), Corinth, Megara, Trezenus, Argos, Mantinaea, Epi- 
daurus and Megalopolis, and formed an alliance with the iEtolian League, 
so as to raise a barrier against Macedonia's ambition. In order to extend 
his patriotic work into central Greece, he aided in delivering Athens and 
Orchomenos. A few efforts more, and the Achian League would embrace 
all Hellas. 

Greece Becomes A Roman Province. — Unfortunately Sparta re- 
vived on account of an unexpected reform. Cleomenes made property 
common there, restored the public repasts, and with foreigners constituted 
a new Spartan people that entered at once upon a struggle with the Achaians 
to dispute with them the preponderance in the Peloponnesus. Aratus was 
compelled to implore the aid of the Macedonians, who defeated Cleomenes 



The Macedonian Era 107 

at Sellasia (221). This victory put the new Sparta out of reckoning, but it 
made the Achaians dependent on Macedonia, which made everything bow 
to it. The Romans became uneasy regarding this renascent power and 
prepared to interfere so as to break it. Phihp's acts of violence and the 
murder of Aratus gave them many alHes, and the iEtoHans helped in winning 
the battle of Cynocephalae. Victorious Rome took nothing for itself, but it 
divided everything so as to weaken everything. It broke up the leagues in 
Thessaly and central Greece, by declaring that each city would be free; and 
the Greeks applauded, not seeing that this liberty was leading them to 
servitude. Philopoemen of Megalopolis, a worthy successor of Aratus at 
the head of the Achaian confederation, tried to defer the moment of in- 
evitable ruin. Lacedaemon, having fallen into the hands of tyrants, was a 
centre of intrigues. With his own hand, in battle, Philopcemen slew the 
tyrant Machanidas, forced his successor, Nabis, to raise the siege of Messena 
and, entering Sparta as victor, added it to the Achaian League. It was not 
to Rome's advantage that the whole Peloponnesus should form but a single 
commonwealth. Its envoys urged Messena to revolt; in an expedition 
against it Philopoemen fell from his horse, was captured and compelled to 
swallow poison (183). 

During the war against Perseus the Achaians secretly favored him. 
Rome took umbrage at this, and, after its victory at Pydna, demanded satis- 
faction. One thousand of their best citizens were carried off to Italy (168). 
When, seventeen years later, they were restored to liberty, they carried home 
with them an imprudent hatred. The Senate having declared that Corinth, 
Sparta and Argos must withdraw from the league, the Achaians rushed to 
arms, and at Leucopetra, near Corinth, fought the last battle for liberty 
(146). Corinth was burned by Mummius, Greece was reduced to a Roman 
province, and that people which holds so large a place in the world was lost 
in the ocean of Roman power. 

Greece's Services to Civilization. — Epicharmus, the earliest known 
author of Greek comedy, said twenty-four centuries ago: "All things are 
purchased of the gods by toil." And what he said, Greece did. By a 
hitherto unexampled activity the Greeks succeeded in taking so high a stand 
among the nations. Besides planting colonies almost everywhere within 
their reach, they had mastered the world in arms, commerce and civilization. 
In science, they almost created mathematics, geometry, mechanics and 
astronomy, which Egypt and Chaldea had merely broached; and they laid 
the foundations of botany and medicine. In patient observation and pure 
reasoning we have only followed the path opened by Hippocrates, Archi- ' 
medes, Aristotle and Hipparchus; they have remained eternal masters in 



io8 The Macedonian Era 

literature, art and philosophy — the Roman and modern worlds have only 
been their pupils. They carried epic poetry to perfection in Homer, elegiacs 
in Simonides, the ode in Pindar, tragedy in iEschylus, Sophocles and 
Menander, history in Herodotus and Thucydides, parliamentary eloquence 
in ^Eschines and Demosthenes, and that of the bar in Isocrates and Lysias. 
In the arts the world still imitates their models. We only modify their three 
orders of architecture, and copy their designs and ornaments in the decora- 
tive arts. The modern world has, indeed, created but one new art, music, 
and developed an old one, painting. In philosophy, as they had no sacred 
books, they had no fixed doctrines or priestly class jealously keeping to 
itself dogma and knowledge, no social aristocracy limiting the field of 
thought — they let the mind have fullest liberty. Accordingly, they gave 
independence to moral and political philosophy, making them the domain 
of all and assigning to them no other object than seeking truth. Thus they 
opened an immense horizon to the intellect. Before the Hellenes, the 
Orient had produced wise men, but below them the people formed only 
flocks docile to the master's voice. It was in Greece that mankind was 
conscious of itself; it was there that man took full possession of the faculties 
implanted in him by the Creator and of the feeling of his personal dignity. 
The slavery maintained in the cities by the politicians, and justified in 
books by the philosophers, was the ransom paid to that past from which 
the freest nations detached themselves only with extreme slowness. 

Shortcomings of the Political and Religious Spirit of the Greeks. 

But this picture has its shades. As political theorists the Greeks were 
admirable, and Aristotle especially; but they knew how to organize cities 
only. To the idea of a great State they were opposed by nature; and never, 
except momentarily, during the Median wars, or too late, in the time of the 
Achaian League, did they consent to a brotherly union of their forces and 
destinies. Therefore did they lose their independence as soon as there was 
formed on their frontiers, by means of the resources of their civilization, 
the half barbarian, half Hellenic military monarchy of the Macedonians. 
Rome found it still less difficult to subdue them. 

The religion of the Greeks, so favorable to art and poetry, was not 
so to virtue. By representing the gods, personifications of the powers of 
nature, as addicted to the most shameful passions, committing theft, incest 
and adultery, and breathing hatred and vengeance, it clouded the conception 
of justice and legalized evil by the example of those who should have been 
the representatives of virtue. Then, by the parallel development, but in an 
opposite sense, of the legends of the gods and of human reason, it came to 
pass that the polytheism of the Greeks was, in such condition, fatal to a 



The Macedonian Era 109 

form of worship, that rehgion was on one side and morality, on the other. 
The latter attacked the former and gained the upper hand — the gods fell 
from Olympus and grass grew within the enclosure of the temples. It would 
have been well if those dethroned gods had been replaced by a virile teach- 
ing that would have enlightened and purified the human reason. That 
virile teaching was to be found here and there in the words of the poets 
and the philosophers; but the multitude did not listen to them. Devoted to 
the degrading superstitions to which implicit faith leads the weak, it was 
defenceless when evil temptations came to it with the Asiatic corruption 
with which Alexander's conquest had inoculated it. 

Gold depraved everything, both men and institutions. Those merce- 
naries of the Seleucides and the Ptolemies, those ministers of debauchery in 
the voluptuous cities of Asia, those men without a country since they were 
without liberty, lost, along with the manly virtues, the generous devotedness 
that had made them so great at Marathon and Thermopylae, self-respect and 
the worship of beauty and truth that had trained so many good citizens 
and prepared the way for so many masterpieces. Greece indeed still pro- 
duced at long intervals a superior man, as a soil long fertile, but exhausted, 
continues to bear some savory fruit; but as for the multitude, having 
at last nothing left of that which keeps a people in good condition, its 
soul became degraded— it honored but one god, pleasure, with the servili- 
ties and vulgarities that make up its escort. "Fatherland," says a poet 
of this mournful period, "is where one lives well." And those who could 
not live well with a fortune picked up here and there from mud and blood, 
took pains to live at the expense of others. 



CHAPTER VII 



Rome's Rise to Greatness 



Italy and Its Inhabitants. — Greece was now but a small section of 
a great empire of which the Greeks knew little or nothing one hundred 
years earher. It was only in 241 B. C. that Rome closed its first great 
struggle with Carthage and acquired its first possessions outside of It- 
aly. At the time of Alexander's death it had extended its sway no farther 
south than Capua, and had crossed the Apennines only to suffer humiliation 
at Caudium. It had as yet no literature, and its beginnings, though postdat- 
ing the first Olympiad, are as obscure as those of Athens, Sparta or Thebes, 
and were far more humble. How did it rise to the mastery, first of Italy, 
and then of the western world .? Before beginning to answer this question, 
a few words about the land and its earliest known peoples are in order. 

By Italy the Romans meant a little less than the long, narrow penin- 
sular part of the country which now bears that name. It ended at the Arno 
and the Rubicon, beyond which were Liguria and Cisalpine Gaul. In 
physical features it is radically different from Greece. Its coast line, in- 
stead of being everywhere, and often deeply, indented, is comparatively 
regular, as is also its surface in its own way; for, instead of the labyrinth 
of mountains and valleys branching out in all directions, which made and 
kept early Greece a land of many separate States, it has but one mountain 
chain dividing it into two unequal coast strips along its whole length. 
In its ancient meaning, excluding the Po basin, it has no great rivers, and fev/ 
even of moderate length, the Tiber being the longest, and far behind it 
coming the Arno and the Vulturnus. These are all to the west of the moun- 
tains. In the lowlands the soil is fertile; but the surface near the sea 
is occasionally marshy, and there very unhealthful. By reason of its lati- 
tude and its varying elevations, the products of Italy's soil are those of all 
Europe, and in the south those of almost the sub-tropical region. 

The Italians of historic times were closely akin to the Greeks; but 

where and when they separated, it is impossible to determine, nor can we 

say at what period they entered Italy. They came by way of the mainland, 

from the north, and probably found the Celtic Gauls already in the Po val- 

110 



Rome's Rise to Greatness m 

ley, for the Celts were the first Aryan invaders of Europe. Close investi- 
gators also hold that they were preceded in the peninsula by another race 
called the lapygians, whom they drove to the extreme south. The Italians 
came in three great waves, the Latins being the first and at one time oc- 
cupying all the southern region. The next arrival was that of the Sabelli- 
ans or Oscans, subdivided into Umbrians, Sabines, Samnites, etc. The last 
to come were the Tuscans or Etruscans, who were great builders and workers 
in pottery. Some ruins of their massive structures yet remain. They had 
a knowledge of writing, as inscriptions of theirs have been found; but, 
unfortunately, no one has yet succeeded in deciphering them, so that we 
are ignorant of the character of their language. The coast, especially in 
the south, was so thickly studded with Greek cities that that region and 
Sicily became known as Magna Grzecia or Great Greece. 

Legends and History of the Beginnings of Rome. — A short dis- 
tance below the mountains of Sabinium and the mouth of its tributary 
the Anio, the Tiber passes through a group of nine hills and separates 
the fertile plains of Latium from those of Etruria. Of these hills, some 
fifteen or more miles from its mouth, two, the Janiculum and the Vatican, 
are on the right, and the other seven on the left, bank of the river. It was 
on the latter that Rome arose. Legend, which knows so many things 
about beginnings and delights in the marvelous, tells us of seven kings of 
Rome: Romulus, a son of Mars and grandson of a king of Alba Longa, 
nursed by a she-wolf, and founder, on the Palatine, of the present city 
(753 B. C): Numa Pompilius, a religious king inspired by the nymph 
Egeria; Tullus Hostilius, who overthrew Alba Longa after the triple 
duel between the Horatii and the Curiatii; Ancus Marcius, the founder 
of Ostia; Tarquinius Priscus, perhaps the representative of a conquest 
of Rome by the Etruscans; Servius TuUius, his son-in-law, the law-giver; 
and in the last place Tarquinius Superbus, the abominable tyrant whom 
the Romans deposed and banished. 

But history, more cautious, entertains many doubts concerning this 
royal period, of which it catches a glimpse only through prejudiced nar- 
ratives. But it admits the founding on the Palatine of a city whose walls 
were discovered only a comparatively short time ago, Roma Quadrata, 
which measured its robust youth against its neighbors of Latium Sabinium 
and Etruria, and which grew so large that Servius was obliged to give 
to it the compass it retained during the whole period of the republic. It 
was originally a collection of towns on the hills, inhabited by Latin, Tuscan 
and Sabinian shepherds, who lived in small thatched huts and levied 
tribute on passing commerce. When these towns became united into one 



112 Rome's Rise to Greatness 

commonwealth, the distinction of the three tribes was maintained. In- 
vestigators have found manners, institutions and a poHtical organization 
that it required a considerable time to develop; and it is conceded that, 
under its last king, Rome was already the capital of Latium, formerly 
a confederation of thirty towns and now the greatest power in Italy. It 
had as it were two separate peoples, the patricians or nobility and the ple- 
beians or commonalty. The former was composed of families each of 
which formed a gens or clan, had its own gods, its common property, and 
its head, who was at one and the same time pontiff at the domestic altars, 
supreme judge over his wife and children, a patron obeyed by his clients, 
absolute master of his slaves, and, in forum and curia, member of the 
sovereign people that elected the prince, promulgated the laws, and de- 
cided on peace or war. The plebs, a promiscuous lot of vanquished 
carried to the city, of strangers who had settled there, and perhaps of 
natives dispossessed by the first conquest, had nothing in common with 
the patriciate, either as to gods, marriages, or political rights. The divi- 
sion of the city into four quarters of urban tribes, or the territory into 
twenty-six townships or rural tribes, or the people, patricians and ple- 
beians, into six classes determined by means and into one hundred and 
ninety-three centuries, is attributed to Servius Tullius. The first class 
had to itself alone ninety-eight centuries, that is, when these centuries, after 
the abolition of royalty, represented suffrages, ninety-eight votes, while 
all the others together had only ninety-five. 

The Republic — Consuls. Tribunes. Decemvirate. — It was the 
patrician order that overthrew Tarquin (about 510 B. C.) and for the 
king for life substituted two annual consuls taken from its own member- 
ship and elected solely by it. The change was, then, an aristocratic revolu- 
tion. One of the first two consuls was Brutus, who, having found his 
sons imphcated in a conspiracy organized to recall the king, ordered and 
coolly witnessed their death. Tarquin took his revenge by rousing all 
the neighboring peoples, who reduced Rome almost to the territory with- 
in its walls. The bloody victory of Lake Regillus saved it (496); but an 
internal evil was undermining it — the weight of the debts accumulated 
by the expenses and pillagings of the late wars. Roman law was singu- 
larly favorable to creditors; they abused their rights, and the poor be- 
came irritated and refused to have themselves enrolled. Then the Senate 
created the Dictatorship, a magistracy from which there was no appeal, 
but whose power, more unHmited than that of the kings had been, was 
to last only six months. The people became frightened and yielded; 
but then violence of the creditors so increased that the poor left the city 



Rome's Rise to Greatness 113 

and withdrew to the Sacred Mount, a short distance northeast of it. They 
returned only when they had received the concession of Tribunes, annual 
heads of the plebeians entrusted with a veto that could annul the decisions 
of the consuls and of the Senate. At first the Tribunes used this right 
of opposition as a shield to defend the people, but later on as a club with 
which to attack the grandees and make themselves masters of the republic 

(493)- 

The forty-two years that elapsed between the creation of the Tribu- 
nate and that of the Decemvirate were filled up externally with petty 
wars and internally with troubles that in 461 led the tribune Terentillus 
Arsa to ask for the drawing up of a written code of which all could become 
cognizant. For a long time the patricians opposed this project; but 
at last it was adopted, and Decemvirs were elected, with unlimited powers, 
to write the new laws. One of them, Appius Claudius, tried to make him- 
self a tyrant. He fell in consequence of an act of violence that drove a 
father to kill his daughter so as to save her from outrage (449). 

The Laws of the Twelve Tables. — In the legislation published by the 
Decemvirs attacks on property were cruelly punished. The thief could be 
slain with impunity at night, and even in daytime if he defended himself. 
"He who will set fire to a stack of wheat will be bound, beaten with rods, 
and burned." "The insolvent debtor will be sold or cut in pieces." As 
for delinquencies regarded as less serious, we find the two systems of punish- 
ment in use among all barbarian peoples, namely, the talio or bodily repris- 
al, and compounding. "He who breaks a member will pay three hundred 
asses to the injured person; if he does not compound with him, let him be 
subjected to the talio. " Yet there were in this code provisions favorable to 
the plebeians. The rate of interest was diminished, and guarantees were 
given to individual liberty. "Let the false witness and the corrupt judge," 
the law added, " be thrown from a height, " " Let there always be an appeal 
to the people from the decisions of the magistrates. " " Let the people alone, 
in the comitia centuriata (assemblies of the hundreds), have the power to 
pass capital sentences," that is, criminal jurisdiction was given to the 
people. Another advantage to the plebeians was the general character of 
the law. "Let there be no more personal laws." The civil legislation of 
the Twelve Tables took cognizance only of Roman citizens. Its provisions 
were made neither for an order nor for a class, and its formula always was, 
"si quis" ("if anyone"); for patrician and plebeian, senator, pontiff and 
laborer were equal before it. Thus was at last proclaimed, by oblivion of 
distinctions formerly so marked, the final union of the two peoples, and 
it was that new people, that universality of citizens that now had sovereign 



114 Rome's Rise to Greatness 

authority, which is the source of all power and of all law. "What the 
people will have ordered in the last instance will be the law. " The people, 
therefore, had obtained through the Twelve Tables some material im- 
provements, and, if not political equality, which is but a decoy for the 
poor, because it is advantageous only to their leaders, at least civil equal- 
ity, which can give even to the most wretched the feeling of his dignity 
as a man and raise him above the ignominious vices of servility. 

All Offices Opened to the Plebeians. — The patrician revolution of 
510 had been advantageous only to the aristocracy; whereas that of 448 
benefited only the people. The new consuls, Horatius and Valerius, for- 
bade, under penalty of death, the creating of a magistracy from which there 
would be no appeal, gave the force of law to plebiscites or laws made in the 
plebeian assembly of the tribes, and renewed the anathema, issued against 
anyone attacking the inviolability of the tribunate. But two things kept 
up the irritating distinction between the two orders, namely, the prohibit- 
ing of intermarriages and the holding of all offices by the patricians. In 
445 the tribune Canuleius asked for the abolition of the former restriction, 
and his colleagues for the admission of the plebeians to the consulate. 
The patricians became indignant, but the people withdrew in arms to 
the Janiculum, whereupon the Senate accepted the tribune's proposal. The 
removal of this barrier opened to the plebeians in the near future access 
to the curule offices; but the patriciate held out for another forty-five years. 
Instead of granting the consulate to the plebeians, it dismembered the 
office. Two new magistrates, the censors, created in 444, for five years 
at first, and then for eighteen months, inherited the right of the consuls 
to take the census, to administer the domains and finances of the State, 
to regulate the classes, to draw up the list of the Senate and the knights 
and, in the last place, to have the policing of the city. The consuls re- 
tained the military functions, civil justice, the presidency of the Senate 
and the assemblies, and supervision of the city and the laws; but to the 
consuls and ex-consuls were given, divided among several, however, and 
under the name of military tribuneship, three, four, and sometimes six 
generals. Though this tribuneship was opened to the plebeians in 444, 
yet by the year 400 not a single one of them had reached it. At this time 
Rome had been besieging Veii in Etruria for five years; and it fell to a 
patrician, Camillus, to take it (395). The disorders of the Gallic invasion 
suspended the struggle; but it was renewed with increased violence when 
the danger had passed. In 376 the tribunes Licinius Stolo and Sextius 
renewed the demand for the division of the consulate, and proposed an 
agrarian law (the Licinian) limiting to five hundred acres the extent of 



Rome's Rise to Greatness 115 

domain land that a citizen could own. For ten years in succession did 
the tribunes have themselves reelected. Twice did the Senate have re- 
course to the dictatorship. Camillus, threatened with a heavy fine, ab- 
dicated. Even the sanctity of religion was used against the tribunes; 
there was not a single plebeian in the priesthood; on this account they 
added a fourth demand, which the Senate accepted — ten men were put 
in charge of the Sibylline books, and five of them were plebeians. The 
first plebian consul held office in 366. Then the patricians created the 
praetorship, to which were transferred the judiciary functions of the con- 
suls; but the plebeians reached it in 337. In 355 they obtained access to 
the dictatorship, to the censorship in 350, to the proconsulship in 326, 
and to the augurship in 302. The laws of Publilius Philo (339), making 
plebiscites obligatory for the two orders and permitting two plebeians to be 
named to the consulate at one and the same time, and those of the dictator 
Hortensius (286), confirming all the earlier conquests of the plebeians, 
assured equality and founded that union within and that strength without 
which enabled Rome to triumph over all obstacles. 

The Gauls in Rome. — The fall of Veii had made Rome preponderant 
in central Italy; but the Gauls of the Po valley threatened to strangle this 
prosperity in its cradle. They laid siege to Clusium, which had refused to 
grant them lands, and, angered by the Roman deputies, they marched to- 
wards Rome, defeated its army on the banks of the Allia, and penetrated to 
the foot of the Capitol, where the Roman Senate and youth had shut them- 
selves up. There they stayed seven months, until, recalled to their own 
country by an invasion of the Venetians, they consented to accept a ransom. 
Camillus, appointed dictator, defeated some of their detachments, however 
and Roman vanity took advantage of these slight successes to represent them 
as a complete victory (390). But it took Rome almost half a century to 
recover from this shock. Camillus, Manlius Torquatus and Valerius 
Corvus on several occasions defeated the tribes of Latium, that had revolted, 
the Gauls coming to their aid, and some of the Etruscan cities; they sub- 
dued southern Etruria and nearly all of Latium, and made the Romans 
neighbors of the Samnites. Then a series of wars broke out that lasted 
seventy-eight years, desolated all of central Italy, and placed the whole 
peninsula under the yoke of Rome. These were the wars of Samnium or of 
Italian independence (343-265), for all the peoples of peninsular Italy 
entered the arena in turn, but committed the blunder that ever made Rome's 
enemies fail, that of not attacking her at one and the same time. 

The Earlier Samnite Wars.-If we comprise the expedition of Pyrrhus 



ii6 Rome's Rise to Greatness 

into Italy, the wars of Samnium may be divided into six periods, i, The 
great city of Capua, menaced by the Samnites, gave itself to the Romans, 
who defeated their adversaries, but were prevented by the hostile attitude of 
the Latins from following up their successes (343-341). 2, The Latins 
asked for the privilege of sharing command with the consuls, and claimed 
perfect equality with Rome. On the Senate's refusing, a troublesome war 
(340-338) followed, known as the Latin War. In order to maintain strict 
discipline, Manlius Torquatus ordered the death of his son, because, though 
victorious, he had fought without orders, and Decius Mus sacrificed himself 
to save his legions. After victory, different conditions made to the Latin 
cities assured their obedience. 3, Peace lasted ten years. In 327 the 
Samnites, in order to drive the Romans from Campania, stirred up the 
Greek city of Palepolis. Defeated by Papirius Cursor and Fabius Max- 
imus, the two heroes of this war, they took their revenge at the Caudine 
Forks, where they surrounded the whole Roman army, which was compelled 
to pass under the yoke and to sign a treaty of peace. The Senate did not 
wish to ratify the treaty, and delivered the consuls over to the Samnites, 
who refused to receive them. Fortune rewarded the iniquity. Publilius 
Philo penetrated victoriously into the very heart of Samnium, Papirius 
subdued Apulia, on the other side of the Samnite mountains, and the Senate 
thought it had shut up its indomitable enemy in the Apennines by envelop- 
ing him with a line of fortified places or military colonies. This was the 
condition in 311. 4, But that same year trouble broke out elsewhere. The 
peoples in the north of the peninsula lent aid to those of the centre. Enticed 
by Samnite emissaries, the Etruscans, to the number of between fifty and 
sixty thousand, attacked the Roman colony of Sutrium; but Fabius beat 
them near Perusia, and systematically devastated Samnium, v/hose peoples 
begged for the end of a war that had lasted more than a generation. They 
retained their territory and all the outward signs of independence; but 
they acknowledged the majesty of the Roman people. Circumstances 
were to explain what the Senate meant by Roman majesty. (305). 

Second and Third Italian Anti-Roman Coalitions. — 5, The Samnite 
leaders drew the Sabines, the Etruscans, the Umbrians and the Gauls into a 
general uprising (300). In Rome the courts were closed; all the able- 
bodied men were enrolled; and at least ninety thousand men were put on a 
war footing. The massacre of a whole legion near Camerinum gave the 
passage of the Apennines to the Senones; if they succeeded in effecting a 
junction with the Umbrians and the Etruscans, it was all over with the con- 
sular army. By a diversion Fabius brought the Etruscans back to the de- 
fence of their homes, and then hurried to seek the Gauls in the plains of 



Rome's Rise to Greatness 117 

Sentinum (295). The shock was terrible; seven thousand Romans of the 
left wing, commanded by Decius, had already perished when the consul 
sacrificed himself, after the example of his father. Surrounded on all sides, 
the barbarians retreated, but in good order, and regained their country. 
The destruction of the Samnite legion of the Linus, at Acquilonia (293), 
and the defeat of Pontius Herennius, the victor of the Caudine Forks, at last 
wrung from that people confession of its defeat. A treaty, of whose pro- 
visions we are ignorant, ranked them as allies of Rome (290). So as to 
keep them in check, Venusium was occupied by a powerful colony. 

Central Italy submitted to the mastery of an alliance with Rome. But 
in the north the Etruscans were hostile, and the Gauls had already forgotten 
their defeat at Sentinum. In the south Samnite bands were still wander- 
ing in the mountians of Calabria; the Lucanians were restless, and the 
Greeks became frightened when they saw Roman domination approaching 
them. Tarentum showed increasing spite at Rome's successes. Fortun- 
ately union was impossible between so many peoples, and there was but one 
moment of serious danger, and that in the north, from the Etruscans, who 
destroyed a Roman army. The Senate answered with the extermination of 
the whole Senonian people. Other Gauls, the Boii, who wished to avenge 
their kinsmen, were themselves crushed along with the Etruscans near 
Lake Vadimonis (283). Then the north of the peninsula accepted Roman 
domination, as the peoples of the centre had already done. 

The War with Pyrrhus. — 6, Tarentum, left alone in arms, too late be- 
came aware of its weakness, and called to its aid Pyrrhus, king of Epirus 
(280). On his arrival in the wealthy, effeminate city, he closed the baths 
and the theatres, and compelled the citizens to arm. In the first battle, 
near Heraclea in Lucania, the elephants, with which the Romans had hither- 
to been unacquainted, threw their ranks into disorder, and they left fifteen 
thousand men on the field. But Pyrrhus had lost thirteen thousand. 
"Another such victory," he said, "and I shall return to Epirus without an 
army." Accordingly he sent to Rome his minister Cineas to propose peace. 
"Let Pyrrhus," the aged Appius exclaimed, "first leave Italy, and we will 
then see about treating with him." Cineas received orders to leave Rome 
that very day. "The Senate," he said on his return, "appeared to me 
like an assembly of kings. " Pyrrhus tried a bold move, a surprise on Rome; 
but in that city all the citizens were soldiers, and he could do no more than 
look at its walls from afar. A second battl , near Asculum, where a third 
Decius sacrificed himself proved to him that he would use his power in vain 
against that persevering people, and accordingly he passed into Sicily, 
whither the Greeks called him against the Carthaginians besieging Syra- 



ii8 Rome's Rise to Greatness 

cuse. Pyrrhus relieved that city, and drove the Africans back from post 
to post as far as Lilybaeum. But he soon grew weary of this undertaking, 
as he had done of the first, and recrossed into Italy, from which the adven- 
turer was soon driven by a severe defeat at Beneventum. He tried to con- 
quer Macedonia, was proclaimed as its king, but ere long perished miserably 
in an attack on Argos. Tarentum, thus abandoned, opened its gates (272). 
Magna Grzecia was subdued, as well as the centre and north of the peninsula. 
To complete the conquest of Italy, it was necessary to bring the Cis- 
alpine Gauls into subjection. Rome tried to do so on two occasions, before 
and after the second Punic war. Those tribes naturally inspired it with 
fear. In 226, on hearing that they had called in an army of their trans- 
Alpine kinsmen, the Senate declared that there was tumult and kept under 
arms seven hundred and seventy thousand soldiers, half a million of whom 
were furnished by the Italians. The victory of Telamon, in 225, dispelled 
the danger, and Marcellus won the third spolia opima by slaying the king 
of the Gesati with his own hand. Roman colonies sent to the banks of the 
Po began the enslaving of Cisalpina. It was then the tribes called in Han- 
nibal; but, satisfied with being freed by his victories, they did not rise in 
a body to aid him in crushing Rome. After the battle of Zama, the Senate 
resumed its plans against them, and the emigration of the whole nation of 
the Boii, who went in search of another country on the banks of the Danube, 
gave to the Romans that rich country and the barrier of the Alps. 

First Punic War and Conquest of Sicily. — By this time the great 
contest in the west between Aryans and Semites had been decided against 
the latter. Carthage a colony from Tyre, as we have seen, had extended its 
dominion from Numidia to the frontiers of Cyrene, had organized an im- 
mense caravan trade in the interior of the African continent, and had seized 
sway over the western Mediterranean. While Rome had had to fight the 
Etruscans and the Italian Greeks, rivals of the Carthaginians, the latter had 
applauded its successes and signed treaties with it; but Rome's too com- 
plete victory irritated them, and they were frightened at seeing a single power 
holding the mastery over the beautiful country washed by the Tyrrhenian, 
Adriatic and Ionian seas. It was on account of Sicily that war broke out be- 
tween the two republics (264). Neither Rome nor Carthage could, in fact, 
abandon to a rival power that large island in the centre of the Mediterranean, 
touching on Italy and visible from Africa. Carthage had been there for a 
long time, and Rome was called thither by the Mamertines, now masters of 
Messana, which Hiero II of Syracuse and the Carthaginians were besieging. 
The Romans delivered the city (264), defeated Hiero and imposed on him a 
treaty to which his kingdom remained faithful for half a century, and then 



Rome's Rise to Greatness 119 

drove the Carthaginians from the interior of the island. The latter still 
held the seaports, which could be taken from them only by masters of the 
sea. A fleet built by the Romans and carrying the terrible crow (grapnel), 
in the first encounter defeated the Carthaginian fleet. Another naval vic- 
tory won by Regulus at Ecnomus led him to make a descent on Africa (256), 
and in a few months Carthage had lost almost everything outside its walls. 
The Lacedaemonian Xanthippus brought about a change in the situation. 
After having weakened Regulus with a rapid succession of skirmishes, he 
defeated him in a great battle and annihilated his army. The war, carried 
back to Sicily, languished there for several years. A victory won by Me- 
tellus at Panormus (251) revived the hopes of the Romans. The story of 
Regulus sent by Carthage to demand peace, exhorting the Senate to refuse 
it, and put to death amid frightful tortures after his return to Africa, prob- 
ably belongs to the domain of fiction. A great general then went to Sicily, 
namely, Hamilcar, Hannibal's father. Intrenched in an impregnable 
position at Eryx, he kept the Romans at bay for six years. Under these 
conditions the war might have lasted many )^ears longer; but patriotism 
had given to the Senate a new fleet, which made the Romans masters of the 
sea. After that Hamilcar could be starved. Carthage then yielded and 
brought the ruinous war to an end (241); it abandoned Sicily, returned all 
prisoners without ransom, and in ten years paid an indemnity of three 
thousand two hundred Euboean talents. 

The troubles of Carthage were not yet over. It did not wage war as 
Rome did, by means of its own citizens, but with soldiers whom it purchased 
wherever it could. These mercenaries now revolted, and for three years 
(241-238) Carthaginian Africa was desolated by the Inexpiable War. 
Hamilcar freed his country of it, but, falling under suspicion, he was as it 
were exiled to Spain and undertook the conquest of that country. In a 
few years the whole land as far as the Ebro was subdued by him and his 
son-in-law, Hasdrubal. Rome, alarmed at their progress, stopped them 
by a treaty signed in 227, which stipulated liberty for Saguntum, a Graeco- 
Latin city south of the Ebro. 

Second Punic War — First Period. — The young Hannibal, who wished 
at any cost to renew" the war against the Romans, attacked and destroyed 
that place without even waiting for orders from Carthage, and with a care- 
fully prepared army crossed the Pyrenees, the Rhone and the Alps. This 
bold expedition cost him half his army before he found himself amid the 
Cisalpines, his allies (218). His first victory was gained over the consul 
Scipio, in a cavalry engagement near the junction of the Ticinus and the Po. 
A more serious encounter, on the banks of the Trebia, drove the Romans 



120 Rome's Rise to Greatness 

from Cisalpine Gaul. The following year they also lost in Etruria, near 
Lake Trasimenus, a far more bloody battle, that enabled Hannibal to 
penetrate into central and southern Italy. Owing to the wise temporizing 
of the pro-dictator Fabius, some months elapsed without a fresh disaster; 
but in 216 the terrible battle of Cannae, near Capua, cost the legions fifty 
thousand men, and Capua, with a part of the tribes of southern Italy, 
believing the Romans were ruined, deserted them. But Rome was a 
prodigy of firmness. It abandoned offensive war, fortified the strong 
places, and sought to form a line of intrenched camps around the general 
who had hitherto been so fortunate in battles. But before this circle could 
be closed on him, Hannibal had left Campania. 

As Carthage refused him aid, he sought it by stirring up revolt in 
Sardinia and Sicily, by forming an alliance with Philip of Macedon, and by 
calling from Spain, along the route he himself had traversed, his brother-in- 
law Hasdrubal with a fresh army of Spaniards and Gauls. But Sardinia 
was held in check; Syracuse revolted, but was taken by Marcellus, in spite 
of Archimedes' machines; and Philip, beaten on the banks of the Aous and 
m.enaced, at the instigation of Rome, by several Greek peoples, could not 
bring his phalanx to Hannibal. During these vain efforts of its enemy, 
Rome was arming twenty legions, every day hemming in Hannibal more and 
more in Apulia and Lucania, and striving its utmost against Capua, so as to 
make a terrible example of that city, which had been the first to give the 
signal of defection. In order to save it, Hannibal penetrated to the very 
walls of Rome, but as ineffectually as Pyrrhus had done. Capua fell, and 
all its inhabitants were sold into slavery. There now remained to Hannibal 
but a single hope — his brother was bringing to him sixty thousand men. 
Brought to a standstill on the banks of the Metaurus by the two consuls, 
Hasdrubal perished there with his whole army (207). Yet Hannibal held 
out for five years more in lower Bruttium, until Scipio forced him from 
Italy by laying siege to Carthage. 

End of the Second Punic War. — Two Scipios, Cneus and Cornelius, 
had been fighting in Spain since the year 218. After brilliant successes, 
they were overwhelmed by superior forces, and" perished. A young knight, 
Marcius, saved the remnants of their troops, and confidence was already 
reviving when the son of Cornelius, Publius Scipio, scarcely twenty-four 
years old, took command of the army in Spain (211). At the very start he 
distinguished himself by a bold stroke, the sudden capture of Carthago 
Nova (Cartagena), the arsenal of the Carthaginians in the peninsula (210). 
Aided by the Spaniards whom he had won over by his mildness, he beat 
Hasdrubal, but allowed him to escape, made the other Carthaginian generals 






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Rome's Rise to Greatness 121 

retreat to Gades, went into Africa, where he prevailed upon Syphax, king 
of the Numidians, to sign an alliance with Rome, and, receiving the con- 
sulship in reward for his successes, resolved to go and attack Carthage it- 
self. In spite of the opposition of Fabius, whom this boldness frightened, 
he landed in Africa, where, of the two Numidian kings on whom he counted, 
one, Syphax, was hostile, and the other, Massinissa, dispossessed. Never- 
theless, he scattered all the armies sent against him, and compelled Carthage, 
threatened with a siege, to recall Hannibal. The hitherto invincible 
general was now himself vanquished at Zama, on his last battlefield, which 
was covered by the bodies of twenty thousand of his soldiers, and he re- 
entered Carthage, still greater than his conqueror (202). 

Scipio did himself honor by not asking for the extradition of Hannibal. 
He laid down the following conditions: Carthage would retain its laws 
and its possessions in Africa; it would deliver up the prisoners and the 
refugees, all its ships but ten, and all its elephants, without the privilege of 
taming others in the future; it would wage no wars, even in Africa, without 
Rome's permission, and it could not raise foreign mercenaries; it would pay 
ten thousand talents in fifty years, would indemnify Massinissa and acknowl- 
edge him as ally. Scipio received four thousand prisoners, quite a num- 
ber of refugees whom he had crucified or hacked to death, and five hundred 
vessels, which he burned in the open sea. Carthage was disarmed. So as 
it could not rise again, Scipio gave it as neighbor an irreconcilable enemy, 
Massinissa, whom he recognized as king of Numidia (201). 

Scipio's return to Rome was a most magnificent triumph. He received 
the name Africanus, and the people offered him the consulate and the dic- 
tatorship for life. Thus did Rome forget its laws so as the better to'honor 
its successful general. It offered to Scipio what it was to let Caesar take; 
for Zama was not only the end of the second Punic war, it was the beginning 
of the conquest of the world. 

Third Punic War and Destruction of Carthage. — A last word on the 
downfall of the Semitic capital in Africa. Since Zama its existence was but 
a long agony. In 193 Massinissa robbed it of the rich territory of Emporia 
(Byzacium); eleven years later considerable lands, in 174 the whole prov- 
ince of Tisca and seventy cities. The Carthaginians protested to Rome; 
the Senate promised justice, but Massinissa kept the disputed territory. 
Yet, apparently to arrange an arbitration, Rome sent Cato, who, having 
found to his surprise and anger that Carthage was rich, prosperous and 
populous, returned with hatred in his heart; and from that time each of his 
speeches ended with the words: "And, moreover, I think it necessary to des- 
troy Carthage" (delenda est Carthago). The opportunity was easy to find. 



12 2 Rome's Rise to Greatness 

One day Carthage repelled an attack made by Massinissa; the Senate cried 
violation of treaty (149), and the two consuls at once landed in Africa with 
eighty thousand soldiers; they demanded that all arms and war machines be 
turned over to them; then, when they had received everything, they ordered 
the Carthaginians to abandon their city and go and settle at least ten 
miles away in the country. Indignation reawakened that numerous people. 
Night and day they manufactured arms, and Hasdrubal mustered in his 
camp at Nepheris as many as seventy thousand men. On the part of the 
Romans poorly managed operations languished; but the people gave the 
consulship to Scipio jEmilianus, the second Africanus, who had asked of 
them only the aedileship. He restored discipline in the army, and accus- 
tomed the soldiers again to the habit of obedience, courage and hard work. 
Carthage was situated on a promontory beyond an isthmus; across this he 
dug a trench and built a wall that prevented sallies, and, so as to starve the 
city's seven hundred thousand inhabitants, he closed the harbor with an 
immense dike. The Carthaginians dug through the rock a new exit towards 
the high sea, and a fleet built out of the ruins of their houses came near 
taking the Roman galleys by surprise. Scipio drove it back, however, and 
when famine, by its frightful ravages, had weakened the defence, he forced 
a part of the walls — Carthage was taken. But, in order to reach the citadel, 
Byrsa, placed in the centre, it was necessary to traverse long narrow streets, 
where the Carthaginians, intrenched in the houses, offered a most stubborn 
resistance. It took the army six days and six nights to get to the foot of the 
citadel. On the promise that their lives would be spared, fifty thousand 
men marched out of it, with Hasdrubal at their head. His wife, after 
having most bitterly censured her husband's cowardice from the top of the 
walls, cut the throats of her two children and threw herself into the flames. 
Scipio gave those smoking ruins up to pillage, and commissioners sent by 
the Senate made the Carthaginian territory a Roman province which was 
called Africa (146). 

Roman Conquests in the East. — Between the first and second Punic 
wars Rome, as we have seen, had won a foothold on the Greek continent. 
The Adriatic was then infested with Illyrian pirates, and the widow of their 
last king, Teuta, had two Roman deputies murdered because they had 
spoken too haughtily to her. The Senate sent two hundred vessels and 
twenty thousand legionaries with the two consuls (229), who forced Teuta 
to pay tribute and to cede to the Romans a large part of Illyria. In 221 
they occupied Istria, where they were masters of one of the gates of Italy, 
and they settled to the north of Macedonia, which they were already threat- 
ening from Illyria. 



I 



Rome's Rise to Greatness 123 

The wars against Antiochus, Philip, Perseus and the Achaians have 
been already mentioned; we need dwell here, then, only on the Roman 
generals who conducted them. Scipio Asiaticus, the victor over Antiochus 
at Magnesia, was the brother of the elder Scipio Africanus. On returning 
to Rome the two brothers were accused by the tribunes of having received 
money for granting peace to the king of Syria. Africanus, indignant, 
refused to answer and left Rome; Asiaticus, degraded by Cato from his 
knightly dignity, was condemned to refund what he was said to have re- 
ceived; but his poverty proves his innocence. T. Quintius Flamininus 
was the conqueror of Philip at Cynocephalae and the founder of Roman 
policy in Greece, where he remained long after his command had expired, 
so as to organize a Roman party there. It was he also who went and 
asked the king of Bithynia, Prusias, for the head of Hannibal, then a refugee 
in his realm. The hero poisoned himself so as not to fall alive into the 
power of Rome (183). Paulus i^milius, who overcame Perseus at Pydna, 
had won fame in the wars of Lusitania and Liguria. His triumph, in which 
he displayed the spoils of Macedonia, was the most gorgeous that had yet 
been seen. Then sixty years old, he lived some years longer, was censor 
in 160, and died in that office. Mummius, the destroyer of Corinth and of 
the Achaian league, is famous for his bluntness. He kept nothing for 
himself out of the pillage of that rich city; but he imposed as a condition 
on those intrusted with transferring to Rome the statues and paintings, 
masterpieces of art, that they would have to make good if they spoiled or 
lost anything on the way. 

Conquest of Spain — Viriathus and Numantia. — The war in Spain 
was longer and more difficult. During the second Punic war the Spaniards 
had supported the Romans from hatred of Carthage; but Rome brought 
them no liberty. When they saw praetors come to govern them, they rose 
up in arms (197), and the Senate had to begin all over again the conquest 
of the whole country. It was necessary to give sixty-four years to the 
work. Cato (195) and Tiberius Gracchus (178) distinguished themselves 
there. When Carthage first saw the danger of there being a third Punic 
war, one of its emissaries stirred up the Lusitanians (153), who slew nine 
I thousand of the men under the Roman general, Galba. He feigned to 
treat with them, offered them fertile lands, and then massacred thirty 
thousand. This perfidy bore its fruits. A shepherd, Viriathus, waged on 
the Romans a war of surprises and skirmishes (149). For five years he con- 
quered all the generals sent against him; he succeeded even in arousing 
the Celtiberians, thus making that war very serious. One day he shut up 
the consul Fabius in a defile, and made him sign a treaty (141). The 



124 Rome's Rise to Greatness 

brother of Fabius, Cepio, undertook revenge with an ambush. He won 
over two of the Lusitanian hero's officers, who assassinated him (140). 
His people submitted; Cepio transferred a part of them to the shores of the 
Mediterranean, where they built Valencia. 

The Spanish war then became concentrated around Numantia, in the 
north. Here the Romans suffered a defeat in 138. Next year the consul 
Mancinus was hemmed in by the Numantians, and promised peace if they 
would let him go. A treaty was concluded, but the Senate rejected it. 
To subdue that small mountain town required no less a personage than 
him who had destroyed Carthage (134). He gradually drove back the 
Numantians within their city and hemmed them in with four lines of 
intrenchments. Suffering ere long from a terrible famine, they asked for 
battle, but Scipio refused and reduced them to slaying one another (133). 
Fifty Numantians only followed his triumphal chariot to Rome. Peace 
at last reigned in Spain. But the mountaineers of the north had not been 
subdued; it was only under Augustus that the pacification of Spain was 
completed. The Balearic Island were seized in 124, after the inhabitants 
had been almost exterminated. 

Thus, a century and a quarter B. C, the city whose humble beginnings 
we have seen on the Palatine ruled from the Spanish Atlantic shore to the 
heart of Asia Minor. It possessed the three great peninsulas of southern 
Europe. Between Italy and Greece it had made for itself a way around the 
Adriatic, and Marseilles loaned her ships to it, as well as her pi ots from 
the Var to the Ebro. The work of conquering the ancient world was, then 
well advanced. Rome had owed these successes to three forces which, in 
politics, bring the others, namely, the ability of a Senate with a long ex- 
perience in the great traditions of government, the wisdom of a people docile 
to its own laws, and the strong organization and discipline of legions that 
formed the most perfect instrument of war that the world had yet kown. 



CHAPTER VIII 



Critical Period of Roman History 



Conquests Bring Moral and Constitutional Changes.— The 
time had not yet come when Greece could boast of having imposed its 
civihzation on Rome, when Greek culture produced a Latin Hterature, a 
literature second only to its own. But only another century was to elapse 
when Horace would have to confess that conquered Greece had conquered 
her fierce conqueror — Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit. With 
territorial expansion, however, came other changes that, unlike this one, 
produced disastrous results. The acquisition by conquest of so many rich 
provinces had had on morality and social conditions, and as a consequence 
on the constitution of the State, effects that were already making themselves 
felt and that in their development were to destroy the RepubHc and its 
liberties. Gradually the old simple life was abandoned; the descendants 
of Fabricius, Curius Dentatus and Regulus affected to live in ruinous luxury, 
and, so as to make up for the treasure squandered in debauchery and 
frivolous expenditures, allies were robbed and the public funds became the 
prey of pilferers. This evil had begun to show itself immediately after 
the second Punic war. Already had the censors, the official guardians 
of pubHc morals, been compelled to drive members of the nobihty from 
the Senate. And if the great were becoming greedy, venality was taking 
possession of the lowly. The middle classes had disappeared, decimated 
by continual wars and ruined by the decHne of agriculture as well as by 
competition which the slaves had set up against the free laborers. Instead, 
then, of that robust, proud and energetic population that had founded 
Hberty and conquered Italy, men were beginning to see in Rome only an 
idle, hungry, mendicant mob recruited by enfranchisements and no longer 
having the ideas, any more than it had in its veins the blood, of the ple- 
beians of old. A tribune truly declared one day: "There are not two 
thousand individuals who own property." Such, then, was the situa- 
tion — two or three hundred millionaire families, and below them, very 
far below, three hundred thousand beggars; between these two classes 
there was a void, that is, there were only a haughty aristocracy and a 

125 



126 Critical Period of Roman History 

multitude without strength or dignity. The Gracchi proposed to do 
two things — to bring back to respect for the laws those grandees who no 
longer respected anything, and to revive feelings of citizenship in those 
men who were once called the people-king, but whom Scipio iEmilianus, 
who knew their origin, designated as false sons of Italy. 

The Gracchi and Their Vain Efforts for Reform. — ^Tiberius 
Gracchus, the elder of the two sons of Cornelia, daughter of the victor of 
Zama, was elected tribune in 133, and at once began with the people. So 
as to bring it back to its former virtues, it was necessary to restore its former 
morals. He wished to make all those poor men land owners — peasant pro- 
prietors — and to regenerate them by the virtue of toil. The Republic 
owned immense properties that had been seized by the wealthy. He pro- 
posed that the State take back these usurped lands and then distribute them 
to the poor in small inalienable plots. He had a law enacted prohibiting 
anyone from owning more than five hundred acres of conquered lands 
and promised an indemnity to the despoiled holders for the expenses 
incurred by them on the estates they would restore. But the grandees 
offered most active resistance; and Tiberius, so as to get rid of the veto 
of one of his colleagues, Octavius, had him deposed. That was tramp- 
ling upon the inviolability of the tribuneship. And this dangerous ex- 
ample was soon turned against himself. The grandees, in fact, armed their 
slaves, attacked the tribune and his followers, and slew him on the steps 
of the Capitol (133)- The friends of Gracchus who had not been murdered 
in that fracas having been executed or banished, the people repented of 
having abandoned their tribune, and the struggle was on the point of being 
renewed, when Scipio iEmilianus interfered. He thought of remedying 
the evil of which the Republic was dying, but his adversaries did not give 
him time to make his plans known; one night he was found assassinated 
(129). The Italians, to whom, perhaps, he wished to give the rights 
of Roman citizenship, were at once driven from the city, and a revolt that 
had broken out at Fregellae on the Liris was harshly suppressed. 

In 123 Caius Gracchus, the younger brother of Tiberius, was elected 
tribune, and at once openly took up his brother's plans. He had the 
agrarian law confirmed, established distributions of grain to the people, 
founded colonies for poor citizens, and aimed a fatal blow at the power 
of the Senate by taking from it the administration of justice and trans- 
ferring it to the knights. For two years he was omnipotent in the city. 
But the Senate, so as to ruin his credit, had a tribune of its own add pro- 
visions more popular than his to every measure he proposed; and Caius 
was unable to obtain his reelection to a third term. This check was as it 



Critical Period of Roman History 127 

were the signal for Vvhich the consul Opimius was waiting. Caius met 
his brother's fate. Three thousand of his followers perished with him 
(121), and the tribunes, silent from terror for twelve years, found voice 
again only through the scandals of the Numidian war, which brought 
into prominence Marius, the avenger of the Gracchi on the aristocracy. 

Marius and the Conquest of Numidia. — Marius was a native of 
Arpinum, rude and illiterate, an intrepid soldier, a good general, but as 
irresolute in the forum as he was firm in camp and field. Scipio had 
taken notice of him at the siege of Numantia. The support of the Metelli, 
who had always protected his family, raised him to the tribuneship in 119. 
His first act was a proposal against canvassing and bribery. The whole 
nobility protested against this audacity on the part of an unknown young 
man; but in the Senate Marius threatened the consul with imprisonment, 
and called his summoner to drag Metellus thither. The people applauded. 
Some days later the tribune had a gratuitous distribution of grain rejected. 
This presumption to give a lesson to both parties turned everybody against 
him. Accordingly he failed when he canvassed both aedileships in succes- 
sion. In 117 he obtained the przetorship only by the lowest vote. This 
difficulty in making his way slackened his zeal; he lived obscurely through 
his praetorship at Rome and his propraetorship in Spain. On his return 
the Arpinum peasant sealed his peace with the nobles by an illustrious 
alliance — he married the patrician Julia, Caesar's grandaunt; and Me- 
tellus, forgetting in favor of his military talents his conduct during his 
tribuneship, brought him along with him to Numidia. 

Micipsa, son of Massinissa and king of Numidia, had at his death 
(119) divided his States between his two sons and his nephew, Jugurtha. 
The latter got rid of one of his rivals by assassination; unable to catch 
the other unawares, he attacked him openly, in spite of Rome's protection, 
and had him put to death amid tortures when famine had compelled him 
to open the gates of Cirtha, his last refuge (112). In vain had the Senate 
sent two embassies to save him. Such boldness called for chastisement, 
but the first general sent out sold peace to him (m). A tribune cited the 
king to Rome; Jugurtha made bold to appear, and when one tribune 
ordered him to answer, another whom he had bought forbade him to speak. 
A competitor to the Numidian throne was then in the city, and Jugurtha 
had him murdered (no). The Senate commanded him to leave Rome, 
at once. "A city for sale," he exclaimed when he had passed outside the 
gates, "if it can only find a purchaser." A consul followed him to Africa; 
his legions, surrounded by the Numidians, renewed the disgrace endured 
before Numantia, and passed under the yoke. This war, made very light 



128 Critical Period of Roman History 

of at first, was becoming a cause for uneasiness when another and a more 
terrible war, that with the Cimbri, was approaching Italy. An honest and 
stern man, Metellus, was sent to Numidia. He restored discipline, and 
trucelessly and unrelaxingly pursued his indefatigable adversary. He beat 
him near the Muthul (109), took from him Vacca, his capital. Sicca, Circha 
and all the coast cities; and he was about to overwhelm him when his 
lieutenant, Marius, now consul (107), robbed him of the honor of bringing 
this war to an end. The new commander came near slaying Jugurtha in bat- 
tle with his own hand, and drove him back on Mauritania. King Bocchus, 
the Numidian's father-in-law, betrayed the vanquished who had come 
to him as a suppliant and handed him over to the Romans. Jugurtha 
traversed his whole kingdom in chains (106), followed Marius to Rome, 
and, after the triumph, was cast into the Tullianum, a prison dug out of the 
Capitoline hill. "By the gods," he exclaimed, laughing, "how cold your 
sweating-houses are." There for six days he struggled against hunger 
(104). The province of Africa was enlarged by the addition of a part of 
Numidia. 

Invasion of the Cimbri and the Teutones. — This success occurred 
opportunely to reassure Rome, now menaced by a great peril. Three 
hundred thousand Cimbri and Teutones, driven south by an overflowing 
of the Baltic, had crossed the Danube, defeated a consul (113), and for 
three years devastated Noricum, Pannonia and Illyria. When nothing 
more was left to take, the horde penetrated into Gaul (no) and crushed 
five Roman armies (i 10-105). The way into Italy was opened; but, 
instead of crossing the Alps, the barbarians turned towards Spain, and 
Rome had time to recall Marius from Africa. So as to harden his soldiers 
for war, he subjected them to the severest kinds of work, and when a part 
of the horde again appeared he refused for a long time to fight so as to 
accustom them to get a close view of the barbarians. At last he engaged 
them in battle near Aquae Sextiae (now Aix in Provence), where the Romans 
made a horrible carnage of the Teutons (102). Meanwhile the Cimbri 
had turned the Alps and gone down into the peninsula by the Adige valley. 
Marius returned as hastily as possible to the banks of the Po, so as to aid 
his colleague, Catulus. The barbarians were awaiting the arrival of the 
Teutones before fighting; they even asked Marius for lands both for them- 
selves and for their brethren. "Do not be uneasy about your brethren," 
the consul said to them, "they have the land which we have given to them, 
and they will keep it for ever. " The Cimbri let him appoint the day and 
the place for battle. At Vercellae as at Aquae Sextiae, there was wholesale 
massacre. Over sixty thousand, however, were captured alive, but twice 



Critical Period of Roman History 129 

as many had been slain. The barbarian women, rather than be captives, 
cut their children's throats and killed themselves (lOi). 

Renewal of Internal Troubles — Satuminus and Sylla. — In reward 
for his services Marius had been kept in the consulate for four years in 
succession; yet his ambition was not satisfied. When he returned to Rome 
he again sought the consular dignity. The nobles thought the Arpinum 
peasant had had honors enough; and they set up against him his personal 
enemy, Metellus Numidicus, and compelled him to purchase votes. He 
did not forgive them for this, and let them be attacked by a demagogue 
of low extraction, Saturninus. The latter asked for the tribuneship; a 
friend of the grandees had been elected; Saturninus murdered him and 
took his place. He at once proposed, in favor of Marius's veterans, an 
agrarian law which Metellus opposed, and this caused the latter's going 
into exile (lOo). This turbulent man's designs are not clearly known; 
perhaps he had none. Yet the Italians and foreigners gathered around 
him, and one day they were heard saluting him with the title of king. So 
as to make one of his accomplices reach the consulship, namely, the praetor 
Glaucia, he slew one of the consuls-elect. Now everybody became in- 
dignant, and Marius was compelled to besiege in the Capitol, and then to 
let stones be thrown at those whom he had perhaps secretly supported. 
This double game turned the people against him. Metellus was recalled, 
and, so as not to see him return in triumph, Marius went to Asia secretly 
entertaining the hope of bringing about a rupture between Mithridates and 
the Republic (98). He needed a war in order to raise himself in the estima- 
tion of his fellow-citizens. "They look upon me," he said, "as a sword 
that rusts in peace. " 

The Jugurthine war and that of the Cimbri had made the fortune of 
the plebeian Marius; three other wars were to make that of a patrician who 
has transmitted to us a sinister memory. Sylla, of the illustrious Cornelia 
house, was at first quaestor under Marius in the Numidian war. Greedy 
for glory, brave, eloquent, and so zealous and active that nothing stopped 
him, Sylla was soon dear to soldiers and officers. Marius himself loved 
that young nobleman who did not count on his ancestors, and gave him the 
dangerous mission of going to treat with Bocchus — it was into Sylla's hands 
that Jugurtha was delivered. Marius associated him in his triumph, and 
employed him also in the war against the Cimbri; but a misunderstanding 
that came between them made Sylla go over to Catulus's army. Later on 
he commanded in Asia, and the allies' war brought his talents into promi- 
nence. 

Revolt of the Allied Italians. — At that time there was as it were 



130 Critical Period of Roman History 

a general fermentation. In the city, the people rose against the nobles; in 
Sicily, the slaves against their masters (Eunus in 134, Salvius and Athenion 
in 103); the allies against Rome, which they brought to the verge of the 
abyss. Associated in all the dangers of the Romans, the Italians had wished 
for a long time to be associated also in their privileges, and claimed the 
right of citizenship. Scipio iEmilianus, Tiberius Gracchus, Saturninus, 
and, lastly, the tribune Drusus (91) made them hope for that title of citizen 
which would exempt them from the exactions and violence of the magistrates 
of Rome. But the knights assassinated Drusus, and the allies, weary of 
such prolonged expectation, resolved to seek justice with armed force. 
Eight peoples of the centre and south of Italy exchanged hostages and 
agreed upon a general rising. They were all to form but one and the same 
republic organized on the model of Rome, with a senate of five hundred 
members, two consuls, twelve praetors, and to have as capital the fortified 
town of Corfinium, to which they gave the significant name of Ithaca. 
The Latins, the Etruscans, the Umbrians and the Gauls remained faith- 
ful. The signal went out from Asculum, where the consul Servilius and 
all the Romans in the place were massacred; even the women were not 
spared (90). At first the allies had the advantage. Campania was invaded, 
one consul was beaten, and another was slain. Marius, who had a com- 
mand, did nothing v/orthy of his reputation. He remained satisfied with 
defending himself, but did not assume the offensive, and ere long even 
withdrew, alleging infirmities as an excuse; his former relations with the 
Italians did not permit him to take more active part. Sylla, who was not 
so hampered, was, on the contrary, active and energetic, and reaped all 
the honor of that short, but terrible, war. The prudence of the Senate 
aided the ability of the generals. The Julia and Plautia-Papiria laws, 
which granted the right of citizenship to the allies who had remained 
faithful, brought on desertions, and at the end of the second year there 
remained in arms only the Samnites and the Lucanians. Of the new 
citizens eight tribes were formed that were the last to vote, and consequently 
they had only a sham privilege (88), By this war Sylla had won the con- 
sulate and the command of the war against Mithridates, which Marius 
solicited in vain. Such was the beginning of their rivalry and of the civil 
wars that prepared the way for the rule of soldiers. 

Proscriptions in Rome — Sulpicius and Cinna. — So as to have the 
last decree set aside, Marius came to an understanding with the tribune 
Sulpicius, and a riot forced the new consul to leave Rome (88); but he 
returned to the city at the head of his troops, and Marius in his turn fled 
from a decree that set a price upon his head. Having taken refuge in the 



Critical Period of Roman History 131 

marshes of Minturnae, he was dragged therefrom covered with mud and 
cast into the city prison. A Cimbrian, sent to slay him, let himself be 
cowed by his looks and words; he did not dare to strike him, and the in- 
habitants, who had no grudge against the friend of the Italians, made a 
pretext of the religious fear with which he had inspired the barbarian to 
supply him with the means for making his escape to Africa. Meanwhile 
in Rome Sylla had by certain laws diminished the power of the tribunes of 
the people; but scarcely had he departed for Asia when the consul Cinna 
asked that the tribuneship receive back its dangerous power, and, driven 
from Rome, he started a war against the Senate. Marius hastily returned 
so as to join hands with him. With an army of fugitive slaves and Italians 
they defeated the Senatorial troops, forced the city gates, and put all of 
Sylla's friends to death. For five days and five nights slaying went on 
unrelaxingly, even on the altars of the gods. From Rome proscription 
extended to the whole of Italy. Men were slain in the cities and on the 
highways, and, as burying the dead was made a capital offence, the corpses 
remained where they lay until dogs and birds of prey devoured them. On 
January i, 86, Marius and Cinna took possession of the consulship without 
the formality of election; but base debauches hastened their end, which 
came on January 13. Marius had set a price on Sylla's head; Valerius 
Flaccus took it upon himself to go and seek it; but he was killed by one of 
his lieutenants. Cinna, left alone, kept himself in power for the next two 
years as consul (85 and 84), but at last fell a victim to the blows of his own 
soldiers. 

Sylla* s Proscriptions and Dictatorship. — Sylla was then returning 
from Asia to defend his friends and himself, at the head of forty thousand 
veterans devoted to his person so far as to offer to him their sayings to 
fill his military chest. He penetrated into Campania unopposed (83), 
defeated a first army, debauched another, and conquered Marius's son in 
the great battle of Sacriportus (82). This success opened to him the way to 
Rome, which he reached too late to prevent fresh murders; for the most 
illustrious of the Senators had just been massacred in the curia itself. 
Sylla passed through Rome only on his way to Etruria to fight the other 
consul, Carbo. A fierce battle, which lasted a whole day, was undecisive; 
but the defection of Cisalpina made Carbo flee into Africa. Sertorius, 
another leader of the popular party, had already set out for Spain; there 
remained in Italy only the younger Marius, shut up in Praeneste. The 
Italians tried a bold stroke to save him. A Samnite leader, Pontius Tele- 
sinus, who had not laid down his arms since the allies' war, tried to take 
Rome by surprise and destroy it; but Sylla had time to come to its relief. 



132 Critical Period of Roman History 

There was fighting near the ColHne gate for a whole day and night, and the 
left wing, which Sylla commanded, was routed. But Crassus, with the 
right wing, scattered the enemy. The battlefield was covered with fifty 
thousand corpses, half of them of Romans. 

Next day Sylla harangued the Senate in the temple of Bellona. Sud- 
denly cries of despair were heard, and the Senators became alarmed. "It 
is nothing," he said, "only some factionists whom I am having chastised," 
and he continued his discourse. At that moment eight thousand Samnite 
and Lucanian prisoners were being murdered. When he returned from 
Praeneste, which had opened its gates and whose whole population were 
massacred, murders began in Rome. Every day a list of the proscribed 
was posted. From December i, 82, until June 1,81, for six whole months, 
murder could be committed with impunity; and even after that men were 
slain, for Sylla's intimates sold the right to have a name placed on the 
fatal list. "As for this man," people said, "it is his fine villa that has made 
him perish; as for that one, his marble-tiled baths; and that other, his 
magnificent gardens." The property of the proscribed was confiscated 
and sold at auction — that of Roscius, worth six million sesterces, Chryso- 
gonus, obtained for two thousand. What was the number of the victims ? 
Appian speaks of ninety senators, fifteen men of consular rank, and two 
thousand six hundred knights; Valerius Maximus of four thousand seven 
hundred proscribed. "But who," says another writer, "could count all 
those immolated to private vengeance .^" Proscription did not stop with 
the victims; the sons and grandsons of the proscribed were declared un- 
worthy of ever holding a public office. In Italy, whole peoples were 
outlawed; the richest cities, such as Spoletum, Interamna, Praeneste, 
Terni and Florentia were as it were sold at auction. In Samnium, Bene- 
ventum alone remained standing. 

Close of Sylla's Career — Ruin of the Popular Party. — ^After having 
slain the men with the sword, Sylla tried to kill the popular party with 
laws. So as to promulgate them, he had himself appointed dictator and 
took every measure he thought proper to secure power in Rome to the 
aristocracy. To the Senate he restored judgments and the previous dis- 
cussion of the laws, that is, legislative veto; from the tribunes he took away 
the right to present an appeal to the people; their veto was limited to civil 
aff'airs only, and the holding of the tribuneship precluded the right to 
canvass for any other office. Thus the people and the aristocrats were 
placed again in the position of four centuries before, the former in the 
obscurity of the part they had played on the morrow of their withdrawal 
to the Mens Sacer, the latter to the prominence and power of the early 



Critical Period of Roman History 133 

days of the Republic. When Sylla had completed his work, he retired. 
His abdication (76) seemed Hke a defiance hurled at his enemies and a 
bold confidence in his good fortune. Having withdrawn to his house at 
Cumae, he lived there a year longer. He had himself written his epitaph, 
and it was truthful: "No one has ever done more good for his friends, or 
more harm to his enemies." 

The popular party was crushed at Rome; but Sertorius tried to lift 
it in Spain. At first hunted by one of Sylla's lieutenants before being able 
to effect any organization, and then recalled by the Lusitanians, he associ- 
ated in his plans the Spaniards, who thought they were fighting for their 
independence, and held out for eight years against the Senate's best generals 
(80-72). Metellus, his first adversary, weary of a war of skirmishes and 
surprises, was compelled to call the governor of Narbonensis to his aid, 
and then Pompey (76), whom Sertorius defeated in several encounters; 
unfortunately, the able leader was but poorly supported. Wherever he was 
not, his lieutenants had the worst of it; one of them, Perpenna, even betrayed 
him and assassinated him in his tent (72). But, incapable of upholding 
the part his victim had played so well, he fell into the hands of Pompey, who 
boasted of having taken eight hundred towns and ended the civil wars. 
They were so, in fact, but only for twenty years. 

Sylla's War against Mithridates. — The shock given to the empire by 
the popular movements in the time of the Gracchi and of Marius, by the 
revolt of the slaves in Sicily and the allies' war in Italy, had made itself 
felt in the provinces. The subjects, horribly oppressed by the governors, 
wished to escape from that Roman domination which the Italians asked 
only to share; those of the west had given themselves to Sertorius, those of 
the east to Mithridates, king of Pontus. He had subdued a large number 
of Scythian nations beyond the Caucasus, the kingdom of the Cimmerian 
Bosphorus, and, in Asia Minor, Cappadocia, Phrygia and Bithynia. The 
Senate, alarmed at that great power being formed near its provinces, ordered 
the praetor of Asia to restore the kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia (9c). 
Mithridates quietly made extensive preparations; and when he knew that 
Italy was in the turmoil of the allies' war, he let his armies loose on Asia. 
Such was the hatred aroused everywhere by the greed of the Roman tax- 
gatherers that eighty thousand Italians were massacred in the Asiatic 
cities by order of Mithridates. Having subdued Asia, the king of Pontus 
invaded Greece and seized Athens (88). A stop must be put as soon as 
possible to that conqueror who dared to come so near to Italy. The 
allies' war being ended, Sylla, in the spring of 87, reached Greece with 
five legions, and began a ten months' siege of Athens. The Pontic army 



134 Critical Period of Roman History 

went out to attack Sylla near Cheronaea, and his soldiers became frightened 
at its immense numbers. Like Marius, he overwhelmed them with work 
until they themselves asked to fight. Of the one hundred and twenty 
thousand Asiatics only ten thousand escaped. 

Sylla was celebrating his victory at Thebes when he learned that a 
consul, Valerius Flaccus, was crossing the Adriatic with an army to rob him 
of the honor of ending that war and to carry out a decree of proscription 
issued at Rome against him. At the same time one of Mithridates' generals, 
Dorylaos, was coming from Asia with eighty thousand men. Between two 
perils Sylla chose the more glorious, and marched against Dorylaos, whom 
he met near Orchomenos in Boeotia. Again were the Asiatic hordes 
scattered, but after a more stubborn resistance. Thebes and three other 
cities of Boeotia met the fate of Athens. While Sylla was winning this second 
victory, Flaccus was forestalling him in Asia, and Mithridates, menaced by 
two armies, secretly sued Sylla for peace, hinting that he could obtain 
rather easy conditions from Fimbria who had murdered Flaccus and as- 
sumed command of his army. But Sylla feigned indignation and threatened 
to pass over to Asia. The king yielded and asked for an interview, which 
took place at Dardanum in Troas. The Roman was stern and inflexible. 
At last Mithridates yielded every point, restored his conquests, gave up 
the captives, the deserters, two thousand talents and seventy galleys. 
Fimbria was in Lydia. Sylla marched against him, enticed his army away 
from him, and reduced him to committing suicide (84). It was with the 
soldiers trained in this war that Sylla returned to beat down the Marian 
party in Italy. 

Lucullus and Pompey against Mithridates. — When, six years later 
the king of Pontus learned of the dictator's death (78), he secretly incited 
Tigranes, king of Armenia, to invade Cappadocia, while he himself made 
ready to take the field. All the barbarian peoples, from the Caucasus to 
Mount Haemus, furnished him with auxiliaries. Proscribed Romans 
drilled his troops and Sertorius sent him officers from Spain (74). Lu- 
cullus, proconsul of Cilicia, intrusted with opposing him, was marching on 
Pontus when he learned that his colleague, Cotta, after two defeats, was 
shut up in Chalcedon (74). He hastented to relieve him, drove Mithridates 
back into Cyzicus, where that prince would have been captured but for the 
negligence of a lieutenant, and then penetrated into Pontus, where he 
carried the fortified city of Amisus (72). The following year he once more 
surrounded his enemy; and the king escaped only by scattering his treasures 
on the road so as to delay pursuit, and took refuge with Tigranes, who, being 
master of Armenia and Syria, and conqueror of the Parthians, over whom he 



Critical Period of Roman History 135 

had won the title of king of kings, was then the most powerful monarch of the 
Orient. In the days of his prosperity Mithridates had not wished to 
acknowledge this supremacy; therefore he was received coldly. But 
when Lucullus demanded that the refugee be delivered up to him, Tigranes 
angrily dismissed the Roman general's envoy. Lucullus at once began 
hostilities against this new enemy. He crossed the Tigris and, with eleven 
thousand infantry and a mere handful of cavalry, marched to meet two 
hundred and fifty thousand Armenians. That was sufficient to scatter 
the barbarians' innumerable army and to seize their capital, Tigranocerta. 
Lucullus wintered in Gordyene, whence he invited the king of the 
Parthians to join him, and when that prince hesitated he resolved to attack 
him, for he held in contempt those Asiatic mobs which their princes took 
for armies. But his officers and soldiers, too rich with the immense booty 
they had already seized, refused, like those of Alexander, to follow him far- 
ther. In 67 Pompey arrived to supersede him. Mithridates had reorgan- 
ized his army; but in the first encounter it was destroyed, and Tigranes, 
menaced by the treason of a rebellious son who had fled to the Romans, was 
compelled to humble himself. Relieved of anxiety here, Pompey went to 
seek Mithridates in the Caucasus, and subdued the Albanians and the 
Iberians; but as the king ever fled before him, he abandoned that fruitless 
pursuit and, in the spring of 64, after having organized Roman administra- 
tion in Pontus, he went down into Syria, reduced that country and Phoenicia 
to the condition of provinces, and went to take Jerusalem, where he restored 
Hyrcanus, who promised an annual tribute. During these operations 
Mithridates, who was supposed to be dead, had reappeared with an army 
in the Bosphorus, and compelled his son Machares to commit suicide, 
There, in spite of his sixty years, that indefatigable enemy wished to pene- 
trate into Thrace, to draw the barbarians after him, and to make a descent 
upon Italy at the head of their innumerable hordes. His soldiers, frightened 
at the magnitude of his plans, revolted at the call of his son Pharnac.es, 
and, so as not to be turned over alive to the Romans, he made a Gaul kill 
him (63). Pompey had nothing more to do but finish in Asia "the pompous 
work of the Roman empire" by distributing to the friends of the Senate 
principalities and kingdoms. 

Revival of the Popular Party in Rome — the Gladiators. — Since 
Sylla's death, and during the new war against Mithridates, important 
events had taken place in Italy. The consul Lepidus had stirred up 
violent storms by merely uttering the simple words: Restoration of the 
tribunes' power. The whole party which Sylla thought he had extinguished 
in blood had immediately raised its head, the governor of Cisalpina had 



136 Critical Period of Roman History 

united with Lepidus, and the Senate and the patricians were in trepidation 
when Pompey, still at the head of the army which he himself had raised 
against the Marians, offered to fight the new popular leaders. He van- 
quished one of them at the Milvian bridge, at the very gates of Rome, and 
the other in Cisalpina; and we have seen how he succeeded in pacifying 
Spain. On returning from this war he again had an opportunity of win- 
ning military renown cheaply as well as of strengthening his position. 
Seventy-eight gladiators who had escaped from Capua, where a large 
number of them were in training, had seized a naturally strong position, 
from which, under the command of a Thracian slave, Spartacus, they 
repelled some troops sent against them. This success attracted to their 
ranks a large number of the neighboring cattle-herds and shepherds. A 
second general was no more successful. Spartacus seized his lictors and 
wanted to lead his army towards the Alps so as to cross those mountains 
and restore every slave to his own country. But his followers, greedy for 
booty and revenge, refused to go with him, and spread throughout Italy 
to ravage it. Two consuls were again beaten. Crassus, to whom the 
command was intrusted, had one of his lieutenants crushed; but he suc- 
ceeded in shutting up the gladiators in the extremity of Bruttium, whither 
their leader had brought them so as to make them pass into Sicily; before 
the work was completed, however, Spartacus took advantage of a snowy 
night to fill up the trenches and escape. Then dissension broke out among 
his followers, and some detached bodies of them were destroyed. Spartacus 
alone seemed invincible; the confidence with which his successes inspired 
the gladiators at last wrought his ruin. They obliged him to engage in a 
decisive action in which he succumbed after having displayed heroic courage 
(71). Soon afterwards Pompey arrived from Spain. He met some bands 
of those unfortunates and cut them to pieces. This easy success seemed 
to him sufficient to entitle him to claim the honor of having also ended 
that war. 

Pompey and the People — the Pirates' War. — The nobility were 
beginning to learn that the conceited general had had enough commands 
and gave him a cold reception. The people, on the contrary, so as to win 
him over, lavished their plaudits upon him, and Pompey, who boasted of 
having never served but as general, that is, of having always violated the 
laws, turned in the direction of the popular party; in 70 he urged a law 
that restored its ancient prerogatives to the tribuneship. This was equiva- 
lent to overthrowing Sylla's constitution. From gratitude the people 
tendered to him the command of an expedition that was far from difficult, 
but yet brilliant, against the pirates infesting the eastern seas (67), and that 



Critical Period of Roman History 137 

of the war against Mithridates, whom Lucullus had reduced to the last 
extremity. While he was bringing these undertakings to a close, a famous 
conspiracy was on the point of endangering the very existence of the Republic 
itself. 

Cicero and Catiline's Conspiracy. — Cicero, like Marius, was a 
native of Arpinum. At an early age his copious and flowery diction showed 
him to be possessed of considerable oratorical ability. After having ob- 
tained some success at the bar, he had the courage to go and make further 
studies in Greece. In public office he began with the quaestorship, and, 
on behalf of the Sicilians, he accused Verres, their former governor, the 
greediest and most barefaced pillager whom Rome had known. This 
trial, which created a great sensation, raised the accuser's renown very 
high, and even to-day his orations against Verres are admired. But 
Cicero, a new man, needed backing. He sought the aid of Pompey, and 
helped to have extraordinary powers conferred upon him. Afterwards, 
having discovered the object which that ambitious man had in view, he 
strove to form the party of honest men that took upon itself the mission 
of defending the Republic. His consulate appeared to be the realization 
of this plan (63). 

At that time the government was seriously threatened by a vast con- 
spiracy. During the proscriptions Catiline had distinguished himself 
among the most ferocious murderers; he had killed his brother-in-law; 
he had cut his wife's throat and that of her son, so as to get another woman 
to give him her hand. Becoming propraetor in Africa, he committed 
terrible embezzlements there (66). On his return he sought the con- 
sulate; but a deputation from the province accused him, and the Senate 
erased his name from the list of candidates. Long before this, he had 
associated himself with the most infamous and criminal men in Rome, and 
a first plot had been concocted to murder the consuls. Twice did the 
attempt fail, and the execution was put off to the year 63, when Cicero 
held the consular honors. He saw how great the danger was. Catiline 
in fact, had collected forces in various places; the veterans of Umbria, 
Etruria and Samnium took up arms for him; the Ostia fleet seemed to 
have been won over; in Africa Sittius promised to move that province, 
and perhaps Spain also. Even in Rome, Catiline thought he could count 
on the consul Antonius; and one of the conspirators was tribune-elect, 
while another was praetor. In the very Senate he had dared to say: "The 
Roman people is a robust body, but has no head; and I will be that head." 
Ere long it was learned that gatherings were being formed in Picenum 
and Apulia, and that a former officer under Sylla, Mallius, was threatening 



138 Critical Period of Roman History 

Fesulze with an army. The consuls were invested by the Senate with 
discretionary power; but Catiline remained in Rome, until Cicero drove 
him out of it with a vehement speech in which he unveiled all the con- 
spirator's plans. Then rid of the leader who, by going to join Mallius, 
declared himself a public enemy, he attacked his accomplices, whom he 
caused to be arrested, condemned by the Senate, and immediately exe- 
cuted. Such energy intimidated the rest of the conspirators, and Antonius 
himself marched against Catiline, who after having fought bravely was 
slain near Pistoria. When, at the expiration of his office, Cicero wished 
to harangue the people, a factious tribune ordered him to confine himself 
to the customary oath that he had done nothing contrary to the laws. " I 
swear," Cicero exclaimed, "that I have saved the Republic." This 
eloquent declaration Cato and the Senators answered by saluting him with 
the name of Father of his Country, which the whole people confirmed with 
its applause. But he who was to enslave that country to his single will 
was already a power in the State. 



CHAPTER IX 



The Caesarean Revolution 



Caesar Becomes Leader of the Popular Party. — Caius Julius 
Caesar, of the ancient patrician but far from distinguished Julia family, 
which laid claim to descent from Venus through lulus, son of Anchises, 
had, at the age of seventeen, braved Sylla's wrath on the occasion of the 
funeral of Marius. Then pardoned, he decided to travel, and set out in 
the escort of the propraetor Marcus Minutius Thermus for the siege of 
Mitylene, the only rebel city of Asia that had not as yet been reduced 
to obedience. Thence he made a journey to Bithynia, whither he was 
sent by Thermus on a diplomatic mission to the aged king of that realm, 
namely, to ask him to lend ships for the siege. He went on several other 
occasions to the same court until, in 78, when the proconsul of Cilicia, 
Publius Servihus, undertook a war against the pirates of Lycia and Pam- 
phylia, he joined him in order to accompany him in that war. But 
soon afterv/ards, as soon as he learned of Sylla's death, he returned to 
Rome. Here he found the political atmosphere impregnated with that dis- 
trust made up of hatred and fear which oligarchies that have little cohesion 
and are not sure of their power shed around them. The aristocratic consti- 
tution restored by Sylla was far from solid, for it by no means answered the 
needs of that age. The aristocratic coterie sought to exclude from the magis- 
tracies, the Senate and the provincial governments all who did not express 
admiration for Sylla and the leaders of the conservative party as the only 
great men who had appeared in the preceding generation, and detestation of 
the democratic party, its men and especially Marius, and the ideas and 
causes which it had defended. Yet, in spite of its faults, this party had ren- 
dered great services to Italy. The conservative cUque could not, therefore, 
inculcate hatred of the democracy and its leaders without offending the 
national feeling of Italy. It is not strange, then, that after Sylla's death • 
the remnants of the democratic party at once became active and took as 
leader, before Caesar's return, Marcus iEmilius Lepidus, one of the con- 
suls for the year 78. He was a wealthy aristocrat, and had been a con- 
servative and a friend of Sylla's; but when the latter tried to prevent his 

139 



I40 The Cesarean Revolution 

election as consul, he changed sides and started a fresh, popular agitation, 
which led the Senate to send Lepidus to his province, Gallia Narbonen- 
sis. The conservatives, then, had still a semblance of mastery when 
Caesar returned. He was received coldly and with jealous distrust by 
the party in power, who had not forgotten his relationship to Marius and 
his revolt against Sylla. That unexpected return, indeed, when a fresh 
revolutionary movement was beginning, could not but arouse suspicion. 
On the contrary, he was joyfully welcomed by the Marian party, which 
was already preparing for a small insurrection. Lepidus, instead of 
going at once to Gaul, had stopped in Etruria to enlist the poor of that 
and other parts of Italy, while another compromised nobleman, Marcus 
Junius Brutus, was recruiting a similar army in the Po valley. Yet, in 
spite of the solicitations of the leader of this movement in Rome, his own 
brother-in-law, Cinna, Caesar, whom experience had made prudent, re- 
fused to join the movement, and thus escaped being compromised in its 
failure. The following year he used his natural eloquence in a prema- 
ture, and therefore unsuccessful, attack on corruption in public office. 
Discouraged, he returned to the Orient, to perfect himself in eloquence 
at Rhodes. On getting back to Rome he feigned to ignore all party affilia- 
tions, and sought to make friends everywhere, but especially among the 
common people. After holding several minor offices, he became curule 
aedile in 65. He won the hearts of the people by the magnifience of his 
public games, and, in defiance of the Senate, he restored the trophies of 
his granduncle, Marius, to the Capitol. Then, by the shrewdest tactics, 
he secured election, though an infidel, to the office of sovereign pontiff. 
Thus did he lay the foundations of his career as the greatest and most 
successful demagogue the world has known. 

Caesar's Consulship. — While climbing to this high eminence Caesar 
had contracted enormous debts. In 62 he already owed eight hundred 
and fifty talents, and the rich Crassus, who owned a whole quarter of 
Rome, had to become his security so that his creditors might let him go 
and take possession of his government of farther Spain. When, in the 
year 60, he returned, he found Pompey and Crassus dissatisfied with the 
Senate, the one because it would not ratify his acts in Asia, the other be- 
cause it left him without influence in the State. Caesar brought them 
together and led them to form a secret union, the three-headed monster 
which history has designated by the name of Triumvirate. All three 
pledged one another by oath to stake their credit and their resources in 
common, and to speak and act on every occasion only in conformity with 
the interests of the association. But it was Caesar who reaped the first 



The Cassarean Revolution 14^ 

and most substantial profits from the alliance — his two colleagues pledged 
themselves to raise him to the consulate. His first concern was to propose 
an agrarian law, which he caused to be adopted in spite of the Senate and 
of his colleague, Bibulus. The support of the people thus assured, he 
won over the equestrian order by diminishing by one-third the cost of 
farming the taxes which the knights raised for the State, he had Pompey's 
acts in Asia confirmed, and he obtained for himself, for five years, the 
government of Cisalpine Gaul and of Illyria, with three legions. It was all 
very well for Cato to exclaim, in prophetic tones: "It is tyranny you are 
arming, and you are establishing it in a fort over your heads," to this 
gift the Senate made haste to add, as a pledge of reconciliation, a fourth 
legion and a third province, Gaul beyond the Alps, where war was im- 
minent (59). Before leaving Rome, Czesar took care to raise to the tribune- 
ship a man on whom he could depend to hold in check during his absence 
both the Senate and Pompey. Clodius first rid him of two men who were 
embarrassing him, namely, Cato, whose austere virtue never let him deviate 
from duty, and Cicero, whose patriotism and eloquence were dreaded. 
Under the pretext that the great orator had illegally caused the death 
of Catiline's accomplices, Clodius obtained against him a sentence of 
exile to four hundred miles from Rome. As for Cato, he was ordered to 
go and make a province of Cyprus. 

Caesar's Gallic Wars. — Since the year 125 the Romans had had a 
province in Gaul, Narbonensis, and they had formed friendly relations 
with a tribe of the centre, the iEdui. The latter had as neighbors the 
Sequani, a portion of whose lands was invaded by a German chief. Ariovis- 
tus had crossed the Rhine with one hundred and twenty thousand Suevi 
(Suabians), beaten the Sequani who had called him in, the ^Edui who had 
aided that tribe, and imposed an oppressive rule on eastern Gaul. Such 
was the beginning of Germanic invasion. Another event drew Caesar's 
attention to that quarter. The Helvetii, grown weary of the incursions 
of the Suevi, wanted to leave their mountains and go in search of a less 
severe climate and a less disturbed existence near the ocean. As no favor- 
able result to Roman domination in Gaul could be foreseen from all these 
changes, Caesar resolved to oppose them; and, the Helvetii having crossed 
the Jura mountains in spite of his threats, he overtook them on the banks 
of the Saone, exterminated a portion of them, and obliged the rest to re- 
turn to their mountain fastnesses. Then he found himself face to face 
with Ariovistus, and a deathdealing attack drove the barbarians beyond 
the Rhine (58). Gaul was delivered; but as the legions had pitched their 
tents on the very frontiers of Belgium, the tribes of that region became 



142 The Caesarean Revolution 

alarmed at seeing the Romans so close to them. They formed a vast 
league, which was broken by the treason of the Remi, and each tribe 
attacked separately, submitted with the exception of the Nervii, who 
came near exterminating the Roman army under Labienus, and the Adu- 
atici, who were all sold as slaves after the capture of their city. During 
this expedition in the northeast, the younger Crassus had overrun Aquitania 
(57). The third campaign was devoted to subduing Armorica (Brittany) 
and the Aquitanians. In the fourth and fifth campaigns, two expeditions 
beyond the Rhine cured the barbarians of the desire to cross that river or 
to aid the Gauls in their resistance; and two descents upon Britain (Eng- 
land) also isolated the Gauls from that island, the chief seat of the Druidic 
religion. With the exception of some uprisings in 54 and 53, in which the 
leading spirits were the Eburian Ambiorix and the Trevirian Indutiomar, 
the whole of Gaul seemed resigned to the yoke. 

General Uprising of the Gauls. — Yet a general revolt was in prepar- 
ation from the Garonne to the Seine. A young Arvernian chief, Vercinget- 
orix, directed the movement (52). The legions were scattered. Caesar, 
hurrying to them, led them against Genabum (Gien), where all the Romans 
had been murdered, and captured Avaricum (Bourges), the only city of 
the Bituriges which they had not burned. An attack on Gergovia (Cler- 
mont) was far from successful; Caesar hastened to call to his aid his lieu- 
tenant Labienus, who had just liberated himself by a victory near Paris, 
and faced two hundred thousand Gauls who were trying to shut him off 
from Narbonensis and the Alps. He defeated them and drove them back 
in disorder into Alesia (Alise in Burgundy, west of Dijon), around Vv^hich 
in a few days he constructed formidable works. The whole strength of 
Gaul was broken against his lines, and Vercingetorix was compelled to 
give himself up (52). After this great fall there were only partial move- 
ments, which came to an end in 51 by the capture of Uxellodunum, and the 
people, a colony of whom had carried off the ransom of the Capitol, was 
for over four centuries inscribed on the list of Rome's subjects. In a 
comparatively short time Gaul became thoroughly Romanized. 

Crassus Defeated and Slain by the Parthians.^While Caesar was 
subduing Gaul by force of activity and genius, one of the trium.virs, Crassus, 
had undertaken an expedition against the Parthians. After having pillaged 
the Syrian temples and that of Jerusalem, he crossed the Euphrates with 
seven legions and penetrated into the immense plains of Mesopotamia, 
where he soon encountered the innumerable cavalry of the Parthians. 
When these horsemen poured down upon the legions, the serried ranks 



The Caesarean Revolution 143 

resisted the terrible shock; but the arms and courage of the Romans be- 
came useless to them in conflict with the tactics which the enemy adopted. 
When they advanced, the Parthians fled; when they stopped, the squadrons 
turned around that motionless mass, and from a distance riddled it with 
arrows. The younger Crassus charged at the head of thirteen hundred 
horse. The enemy gave way, drew him far from the battlefield, and then 
they wheeled about and surrounded him. Crassus ordered his equerry to 
kill him so as not to be captured alive. The Parthians cut off" his head and 
displayed it at the end of a lance in front of the legions, who retreated as 
far as Carrhae, leaving behind them four thousand wounded. Next day 
the Roman army was again overtaken by the Parthians, and the frightened 
soldiers compelled Crassus to accept an interview with the surena or Par- 
thian commander-in-chief. It was an ambush; Crassus and his escort 
were massacred. Only some weak remnants of his army succeeded in 
crossing the Euphrates (53). 

Civil War between Caesar and Pompey. — Of the three associates or 
triumvirs there now remained but two, and between them peace could not 
last very long. While Crassus was fighting in Syria and Caesar in Gaul, 
Pompey had remained in Rome. Constantly insulted by Clodius, he first 
recalled Cicero, that demagogue's personal enemy, and then stirred up 
against him the tribune Milo, who held his ground with a band of gladi- 
ators. The violence of these two men kept the city in disorder until Janu- 
ary, 52, when Milo murdered Clodius. These disorders tended to recon- 
cile Pompey with the Senate, which completely won him over by having 
him made sole consul (February, 52), with absolute power. This was 
royalty in disguise; but, to confront Caesar, whose glory was becoming 
more threatening every day, the Senate needed a general and an army. 
Cato himself had approved of these concessions. Pompey, then, as he had 
always wished, reached usurpation through legal means; but there was 
question now of defending that power against his former associate in the 
triumvirate. Then the attacks against Caesar began to go so far as to rob 
him of his command. In vain did the tribune Curio exclaim that, if 
Caesar was dispossessed, it would be necessary for Pompey to abdicate in 
order to save liberty. On January i, 49, a decree of the Senate declared 
that Caesar would be regarded as a public enemy if by a certain day he had 
not given up his troops and his provinces. Two tribunes who opposed 
this proceeding were threatened by the Pompeians and fled to Caesar's 
camp. He now ceased to hesitate, crossed the Rubicon, the southeastern 
boundary of his government, and in sixty days drove from Italy Pompey 
and the Senators who wished to follow him (49). There was a Pompeian 



144 



Ihe Caesarcan Revolution 



army in Spain; he hastened to attack it, surrounded it, and forced it to 
lay down its arms. On his way back he captured Marseilles, and then 
returned to Rome, where the people had awarded to him the title of dictator. 
Pompey had withdrawn towards Dyracchium (Durazzo) in Epirus, 
and from thence he called to him all the forces in the Orient. In January, 
48, Czesar crossed the Adriatic, and, though his army was very inferior 
in numbers, he tried to surround his adversary. Repelled in an attack 
on positions that were too strong, and running short of provisions, he made 
his way for Thessaly, whither Pompey was so imprudent as to follow him. 
The battle of Pharsalus (PharsaHa), and the defeat and flight of Pompey, 
who took refuge in Egypt, where he was treacherously slain just as he set 
foot on a land he had thought friendly, left Caesar without a rival, if not 
without danger. 

Alexandrian War — Caesar Dictator. — With his usual activity, he had 
followed Pompey as it were by scent, and had arrived in Egypt some days 
after him. The young Ptolemy's ministers were counting on a reward for 
their treachery, but he showed only horror at their conduct, and, attracted 
by the charms of Cleopatra, the king's sister, he wanted her to reign con- 
jointly with her brother. Then the ministers stirred up the enormous 
population of Alexandria, and the victor of Pharsalus saw himself besieged 
for seven months with four thousand legionaries in the palace of the Lagidae. 
Reinforcements that came to him from Asia released him; he then assumed 
the offensive and defeated the royal army. The young king was drowned 
in the Nile while attempting to flee, and Cleopatra remained sole mistress 
of Egypt (48). Caesar returned to Rome by way of Asia, where he de- 
feated Pharnaces. "Veni, vidi, vici" ("I came, I saw, I conquered"), 
he wrote to the Senate (47). Another war awaited him. The remnants 
from Pharsalus, having taken refuge in Africa, now formed a formidable 
army supported by Juba, king of the Numidians. He defeated it at Thap- 
sus, on the coast south of Carthage, and captured Utica, where Cato had 
just committed suicide so as not to survive liberty (46). Before leaving 
Africa, Caesar made arrangements for the rebuilding of Carthage. 

The following year Pompey's sons also stirred up Spain, and this last 
struggle was a difficult one. At Munda Caesar was obliged to fight in 
person; but the republicans were crushed. All the honors which flattery 
could invent were decreed to the victor. He was declared to be almost 
a god; it is needless to say that all the prerogatives of authority were given up 
to him. Moreover, no one ever made a nobler use of his power. There 
were no proscriptions^all injuries were forgotten; discipline was strictly 
maintained in the army; the people were satiated with feasts and games. 



The Caesarean Revolution 145 

but were kept firmly in restraint, and Italian agriculture was encouraged, as 
the Gracchi had wished. For this new authority no new names were 
invented. The Senate, the public assemblies (comitia), and the magistracies 
remained as in the past; only Caesar concentrated in himself alone all 
public action, by uniting in his own hands all the public offices. As dic- 
tator for life and consul for five years, he held the executive power with the 
right of drawing upon the treasury; as imperator (military commander- 
in-chief) complete control of the soldiery; and as tribune the veto over 
the legislative power. As prince of the Senate he directed the debates of 
that assembly; as prefect of morals, he made it up as he pleased; as sov- 
ereign pontiff, he made religion speak in accordance with his interests and 
kept watch over its ministers. Finances, army, religion, the executive 
power, a part of the judiciary power, and, indirectly, nearly all the legis- 
lative power, were, therefore, at his discretion. 

Caesar's Last Plans and Death. — So as to legalize his power, Caesar 
had conceived great plans. He wished to crush the Dacians and the Getae, 
to avenge the death of Crassus, to penetrate as far as the Indus, to return 
over the prostrate Scythians and Germans, and then to assume Alexander's 
crown in the Babylon of the west. Then, as master of the world, he 
would cut a canal through the isthmus of Corinth, drain the Pontine marsh- 
es, give an outlet to Lake Fucinus, and build over the Apennines a great 
road from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian sea. Then he would multiply 
the privilege of citizenship so as to prepare the way for the unity of the 
empire; in a single code he would collect the laws, the decrees of the Senate, 
the plebiscites and the edicts; he would bring together in a public library 
all the products of human thought. Eighty thousand colonists went to 
carry beyond sea the customs and language of Rome; the whole of Sicily 
received the jus Latit (laws of Latium); the peoples beyond the Po, the 
Gallic legion of the Swallow, and all those who had served faithfully, the 
JUS civitatis (municipal law); and reparation would be made for the Repub- 
lic's great acts of injustice — Corinth and Carthage were rising from their 
ruins. But a conspiracy had been on foot for several months, and Cassius 
was its leading spirit. Into it he had dragged Brutus, the nephew and 
son-in-law of Cato, whose virtues, but also whose blind and unreflecting 
devotedness to the old institutions, he seemed to have inherited. The 
imprudent steps taken by Caesar to have the title of king given to him 
increased the number of the conspirators; and on the Ides (15th) of March, 
44, they stabbed him to death in the midst of the Senate. But it was too 
late to save the oligarchical aristocratic republic. 

The Rise of Octavius. — With Caesar dead, the conspirators thought 



10 



146 The Caesarean Revolution 

liberty would revive of its own accord; but Marcus Antonius (Mark An- 
tony), then consul, at the dictator's funeral stirred up the people against 
them, and drove them from the city. Caesar had no son, but only a grand- 
nephew whom he had adopted. When this youth, Octavius, only eighteen 
years old, reached Rome, Antony, who thought he could inherit his old 
master's power, disdained that unsupported pretender; but Caesar's name 
rallied all the veterans around Octavius, and as he pledged himself to carry 
out all the legacies bequeathed by his father to the people and the soldiers, 
by that simple declaration he created for himself a numerous following. 
The Senate, in which Cicero tried once more to wrest liberty from the 
furious hands that wished to strangle it, needed an army to hold out against 
Antony, and that army Octavius alone could give to it. Cicero flattered 
this young man, whom he hoped to guide, and had honors decreed to him 
that seemed far from dangerous. Along with the two consuls he was sent 
to the aid of Decimus Brutus, one of the murderers of Caesar, whom Antony 
was besieging in Modena. This war was brief and bloody (43). Antony 
was beaten, but the two consuls perished, and Octavius demanded one of 
the vacant places for himself. The Senate, which thought it had no further 
need of him, disdainfully rejected his request. He at once led eight legions 
to the gates of Rome, entered the city amid the applause of the people, who 
proclaimed him consul, caused his adoption to be ratified, and, at the 
expense of the public treasury, distributed the promised reward to his 
troops. 

Second Triumvirate. — Now he could treat with Antony, without 
fear of being eclipsed by him. He was consul; he had an army; he was 
master of Rome, and around him had rallied all the Caesareans whom 
his rival's violent acts had estranged. Negotiations proceeded rapidly; An- 
tony, Lepidus, a former general of cavalry under the dictator, and Octavius 
met near Bologna, on an island in the little river Reno. There they spent 
three days formulating the plan of the Second Triumvirate. A new magis- 
tracy was created under the title: Triumviri Reipublicae Constituendae. 
Lepidus, Antony and Octavius assigned to themselves the consular power 
for five years, with the right of disposing of all offices for the same length of 
time. Their decrees would have the force of law, and each of them reserved 
to himself two provinces around Italy, Lepidus Narbonensis and Spain, An- 
tony the two Gauls, and Octavius Africa, Sicily and Sardinia. So as to 
make sure of the soldiers, the triumvirs promised to them five thousand 
drachmae apiece and the farms of eighteen of Italy's most beautiful cities. 
Before going to Rome, they ordered that seventeen of the most prominent 
persons in the State be put to death, and Cicero was of the number. When 



The Caesarean Revolution 147 

they themselves had arrived, they issued the following edict: "Let no one 
conceal any of those whose names follow: he who will aid anyone of the 
proscribed to escape will be proscribed himself. Let the heads be brought 
to us. As a reward, the man of free condition will receive twenty-five 
thousand Attic drachmae, the slave ten thousand, and in addition liberty 
with the title of citizen. " Then followed a list of one hundred and thirty 
names; a second of one hundred and fifty appeared almost immediately; 
and these were followed by others. At the head of the first appearfed the 
names of the brother of Lepidus, of Lucius Caesar, Antony's uncle, and of 
Caius Toranius, one of the guardians of Octavius. Each of the leaders had 
sacrificed one of his own relatives so as to have the right not to be embar- 
rassed in his revenges. The scenes of the bloody days of Marius and Sylla 
were renewed, and the rostrum had once more its hideous trophies of bleed- 
ing heads. A head was presented to Antony: "I do not recognize it," he 
answered, " let it be taken to my wife. " It was that, in fact, of a rich pri- 
vate citizen who had formerly refused to sell one of his villas to Fulvia. 
Several escaped on the ships of Sextus Pompeius, who had just seized Sicily, 
or reached Africa, Syria and Macedonia. Cicero, whom Octavius had 
abandoned to the vengeance of his colleague, was less fortunate — he was 
slain in his villa at Gaeta. His head and one of his hands were cut off and 
carried to Antony while he was seated at table. At that sight he showed 
ferocious joy, and Fulvia, laying hold of that bleeding head, with a needle 
pierced the tongue that had hurled so many well-merited sarcasms at her. 
Those gruesome relics were then attached to the rostra. 

The Battle of Philippi. — On leaving Italy, Brutus had betaken him- 
self to Athens. The governor of Macedonia surrendered his command to 
him, and in a few days the whole region from the Adriatic to Thrace obeyed 
the republican general. Cassius, on his part, had drawn to him the legions 
of the Orient. In order to find money it was necessary that the provinces 
pay at once the taxes for ten years. Loaded with the booty of Asia, the 
republican army returned to Europe, and advanced as far as Philippi in 
Macedonia, to meet the triumvirs. Antony took position in front of Cas- 
sius, and Octavius, of Brutus. The two armies were almost equal in 
numbers; but the republicans had a formidable fleet, which cut off from 
the Caesareans help coming by sea. Accordingly Antony, threatened with 
famine, wished to hasten the battle, which Cassius, for the contrary reason, 
wanted to defer. Brutus, eager to put an end to civil war, longed for the 
fight. Octavius, being ill, had been carried away from his camp, when 
Messala, attacking impetuously, penetrated into his lines. Brutus thought 
victory was won. But at the other wing Antony had scattered the enemy 



148 The Caesarean Revolution 

and captured its camp, and Cassius, thinking his party as good as ruined, 
killed himself. Twenty days after this first action another took place in 
which Brutus's troops were outflanked and routed; their leader, having 
escaped with difficulty, stopped on a hill to effect what he called his deliver- 
ance; he threw himself on his sword, exclaiming: "Virtue, thou art but a 
word!'* Antony was somewhat gentle to the captives, but Octavius was 
pitiless. The republican fleet went and united with that of Sextus Pompey 
(42). * 

Antony in the Orient — the Treaty of Misena. — ^The two victors made 
a fresh division of the world between them, taking no concern about Lepi- 
dus, who was thought to be secretly in league with Pompey. The share of 
the leaders having been settled, that of the soldiers remained to be consid- 
ered. Octavius, still ailing, assumed the apparently thankless task of 
giving farms in Italy to the veterans. Antony took it upon himself to go to 
Asia in search of the necessary two hundred thousand talents. He passed 
through Greece and Asia amid festivities, horribly oppressing the peoples 
so as to find the means for his profusions. In Asia he demanded the taxes 
for nine years at once, without counting the private confiscations. For a 
good dish he gave his cook the house of a citizen of Magnesia. Cleopatra 
had furnished money and troops to Cassius. Antony demanded a reason for 
this conduct. She went herself to Tarsus in Cilicia, where he then was, with 
the hope of winning him, as she had won Caesar, by her charms. Antony did 
not resist, and, when he saw that elegant, educated woman, who spoke six 
languages, holding her own with him in orgies and soldiers' talk, he forgot 
Rome and Fulvia and the Parthians, and, subdued and docile, he followed 
her to Alexandria. 

While he was wasting valuable time in scandalous debauchery, in 
Italy Octavius was engaged in the inextricable difficulties raised by the 
division of the farms. The new settlers were constantly exceeding their 
limits, and as the dispossessed owners, unlike Virgil, had no fine verses with 
which to redeem their estates, they flocked to Rome crying poverty and 
stirring up the people to riot. The triumvir Antony's brother, seeing in 
these popular commotions an opportunity for overthrowing Octavius, 
promised his protection to the dispossessed Italians, and enrolled seventeen 
legions, with which he seized Rome. There he announced the early 
restoration of the Republic. But Agrippa, Octavius's best officer, drove 
him from the city and pressed him so close that he threw himself into Perusia, 
where famine compelled him to surrender (40). Fulvia fled to Greece 
with all of Antony'^ friends, and Octavius remained sole master of Italy. 
But this news dragged the triumvir from his scandalous torpor. He 



The Caesarean Revolution 149 

reached Brundisium, but the soldiers commanded peace, and the two 
adversaries made a new division, which gave to Antony the orient as far 
as the Adriatic, with the obHgation of fighting the Parthians, and the west 
to Octavius with the war against Sextus Pompey, who, however, some days 
afterwards, also signed the treaty of Misena. Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia 
and Achaia were given up to him, and Lepidus had Africa (39). 

Wise Administration of Octavius. — The peace of Misena was but a 
truce, for it was not possible for Octavius to leave the provisioning of Rome 
and his legions at Pompey's mercy. The struggle began in the year 38. 
The treason of the freedman Menas, who turned over to him Corsica and 
Sardinia with three legions and a strong squadron, and especially the talents 
of Agrippa, who created the harbor of lulae by joining the Lucrinus with 
Lake Avernus and reorganized the army and the fleet, assured the success 
of Octavius, which the victory of Naulocca proclaimed (September 3, 36). 
Sextus, having taken refuge in Asia, was put to death in Miletus by one of 
Antony's officers (35). At the same time Octav us got rid of Lepidus; he 
corrupted his troops and banished him to Circeii, where he lived twenty- 
three years. 

When Octavius returned to Rome, the people, seeing abundance suddenly 
reappear, crowned him with flowers and accompanied him to the Capitol. 
They wished to overwhelm him with honors. Already showing disinterested- 
ness and modesty, he accepted only the tribunitial inviolability, suppressed 
some taxes and declared that he would abdicate as soon as Antony had 
ended the war against the Parthians. Meanwhile his energetic administra- 
tion restored order in the peninsula. Bandits were run down; fugitive 
slaves were restored to their masters or put to death when not claimed. In 
less than a year security reigned in city and country. At last, then, Rome 
was governed. 

Antony's Expedition against the Parthians. — In the year 37 
Antony went to Tarentum to renew the triumvirate for five years, and, 
reawakened by his lieutenants' victories, he decided to take upon himself 
the management of the war against the Parthians. But scarcely had he 
touched the soil of Asia when his passion for Cleopatra became madder 
than ever. He had her come to Laodicaea, acknowledged the children 
she had borne him, and added to her kingdom nearly all the coast from 
the Nile to Mount Taurus. These regions were for the most part Roman 
provinces. But were there still a Rome, a Senate, laws, or anything but 
the omnipotent triumvir's caprice ? At last he decided to march against 
the Parthians with sixty thousand infantry, ten thousand cavalry, and 



1 50 The Caesarean Revolution 

thirty thousand auxiharies. He went through Armenia, whose king, 
Artavasdes, was his ally, and penetrated to Phraata, a short distance from 
the Caspian Sea; but as he had not brought his siege machines he had to 
retrace his steps. After marching for twenty-seven days, during which 
he had fought eighteen engagements, he reached the Araxes, the frontier 
of Armenia. His route from Phraata was strewn with the corpses of 
twenty-four thousand of his legionaries. Chance gave Antony an oppor- 
tunity to make reparation for his defeat. A quarrel had broken out between 
the king of the Parthians and him of the Medes, concerning the division of 
the spoils, and the Median in irritation gave it out that he was ready to 
unite with the Romans. Cleopatra kept Antony from answering this call 
of honor, and dragged him after her to Alexandria. 

While Antony was dishonoring himself in the orient, Octavius was 
giving to Italy that repose for which it had been hungering, was subduing the 
numerous pirates of the Adriatic and the restless tribes living north of 
the two peninsulas, the Japodians, the Liburnians and the Dalmatians. 
In the attack on Metulum he took part in the assault himself and received 
three wounds. He penetrated as far as the Save, and subdued a part of the 
Pannonians and the Salassians. Thus of the two triumvirs, the one was 
giving Roman provinces to a barbarian queen and the other v/as increasing 
the territory of the empire. Yet Antony complained and, early in the year 
32, laid claim to a share in the spoils of Sextus and Lepidus. Octavius 
answered with bitter reproaches regarding his conduct in the orient, and 
read in the Senate Antony's will, bequeathing to Cleopatra and her children 
most of the provinces which he had in his power. Octavius thus wished to 
give credence to the rumor that Antony, as soon as he was master, would 
make to Cleoparta a gift of Rome itself. A decree of the Senate declared 
war against the queen of Egypt. 

Actium— Antony's Death— Egypt a Roman Province.— Antony 

collected one hundred thousarid infantry, twelve thousand cavalry, and five 
hundred big war ships. Octavius had only eighty thousand, twelve thou- 
sand, and two hundred of inferior rank, respectively; but his vessels were 
lighter, swifter, and manned by sailors and soldiers who had been trained in 
the difficult war against Sextus. The engagement took place at Actiurn, 
on the Acarnanian coast, September 2, 31. While the battle was still in 
progress, Cleopatra fled with sixty Egyptian vessels, and Antony basely 
followed her. The abandoned fleet surrendered; but for seven days the 
army resisted all solicitations. On this occasion Octavius did not sully 
his victory with vengeance; none of those who asked for life met refusal. 
The victor, recalled to Italy to settle some troubles there, was in a position 



The Caesarean Revolution 151 

to follow his rival only the following year. Antony tried to defend Alex- 
andria; but, betrayed by Cleopatra, he put an end to his own life. The 
queen herself, after having sought in vain to move the conqueror, caused 
herself to be stung by an asp (30). Octavius made Egypt a Roman 
province. 

Rome belonged to a master. Two centuries of wars, pillagings and con- 
quests had destroyed equality in the city of Fabricius, taught the great 
to be insolent and the lowly servile, and filled the army of citizens with 
a mob of soldiers who, forgetting the State, its laws and liberty, now knew 
nothing or no one but the chief whose hand distributed booty and gold to 
them. The establishment of the empire was indeed a military revolution. 
But since Rome had not known how to adopt and abide by the popular 
reforms of the Gracchi, or Sylla's aristocratic reform, that revolution had 
become inevitable. The institutions good for a city of a few thousand men 
could not, in fact, suit a society of eighty million souls; that city, having 
become the capital of the world, could not but continue to be disturbed by 
bloody, but barren rivalries; kings, the allied peoples and the provinces 
remained the prey of two hundred families composing the Roman aris- 
tocracy. But in place of the citizens who were robbed and who deserved 
their fate, would men be trained to capability of recovering, by their volun- 
tary discipline and political intelligence, fresh rights perhaps better than 
those they had lost .? If liberty was not to return, would anyone be able 
to organize into a vigorous body, capable of a long existence, those multi- 
tudes that would thereafter have but one will, that of the prince .? And 
since we are going to have an empire instead of a city, shall we see a great 
nation take the place of the oligarchy that has just been crushed and of the 
populace that regards Caesar's and Octavius's victory as its own triumph ? 
We will learn the answer from the history of Augustus and his successors. 

The Imperial Power Constituted. — ^With Antony dead and Egypt 
added to the domain of the empire, Octavius made his way again to Asia 
Minor, and there spent the whole winter in settling the affairs of the Orient, 
while Maecenas and Agrippa kept watch for him in Rome, without much 
difficulty, however, for nothing was spoken of there but the adulatory decrees 
of the Senate. When at last he entered his capital, to the soldiers, after the 
triumph, he distributed a thousand sesterces a head, to the citizens four 
hundred, and, as an announcement of the new era of peace and order that 
was beginning, he closed the temple of Janus. He was consul, and for six 
years longer he was to hold on to that office which gave him legally nearly 
all the executive power, but above all he needed the army; and so as to 
remain at the head of it, he had the Senate confer on him the name of 



152 The Caesarean Revolution 

Imperator, with the supreme command of all the miHtary forces. The 
generals were now only his lieutenants, and the soldiers swore fidelity to him. 
He retained the Senate and resolved to make it the pivot of his government, 
however, with Agrippa as his colleague, after having taken the prefecture 
of morals, or censorship, which enabled him to exclude from that body 
unworthy members or enemies of the new order of things. When the 
former censors closed the census, he whose name they had put at the head 
of the list of Senators, usually one of themselves, was called Premier of the 
Senate, and that wholly honorary place was left to him during life. Agrippa 
gave to his colleague that republican title, and thus placed the deliberations 
of the Senate under Octavius's direction; for, according to the old usage, 
the Princeps was the first to give his opinion, and that first opinion exerted 
an influence which would now be decisive. 

The Senators had placed all the provinces under his authority by in- 
vesting him with the proconsulate; but Octavius wished that they would at 
least share it with him. He left to them the peaceful and prosperous re- 
gions of the interior, and took for himself those that were still disturbed 
or that the barbarians were menacing, and in which, consequently, the troops 
were stationed. In the fervor of its gratitude, the Senate gave him the 
name that was given only to the gods, that of Augustus (27 B. C), which he 
has retained. Three years later it decreed to him the tribunitial power for 
life, that is, to the military authority which he already held was added the 
civil power which the tribunes, owing to the vague nature of their office, 
had more than once wholly invaded, and with it he won inviolability. 
In the year 19 he received the consulship for life and the prefecture of 
morals. He had accepted only for ten years the command of the provinces 
and the armies; in the year 18 he had his powers renewed and later on asked 
for new extensions, on each occasion protesting against the violence done 
to his tastes in the name of public interest. Lastly, after the death of 
Lepidus, he had himself named as sovereign pontiff. That was his last 
usurpation, and nothing now remained that was worth the trouble of tak- 
ing (12). 

Character of the Government and Reign of Augustus. — As prefect 
of morals, then, Augustus prepared the list of the Senators and knights, 
that is, he could drive his enemies from the equestrian order and from the 
Senate; as sovereign pontiff he had the supervision of worship and its minis- 
ters; as Prince of the Senate, he directed the deliberations of that assembly; 
as Imperator he commanded the armies, and to pay their expenses he had 
a special treasury filled by the better part of the State's revenues. The 
proconsular power turned the provinces over to him, as did the consular 



The Caesarean Revolution 153 

power the cities and Italy. He was irresponsible, since he had powers 
for life and since, as perpetual tribune, his person was inviolable and sacred. 
He appointed directly to most of the offices, indirectly to all the others, 
and, as supreme judge, he received all appeals. A praetorian guard watched 
over his safety even in Rome, and, so as to bind the whole empire together 
by the obligation of an oath, on the first of January every year he had 
the Senate, the people, the legions and the provinces renew their oath of 
fidelity. His reign of over forty-four years was spent in gently organizing 
the monarchy The purified Senate remained as the supreme council 
of the State; Augustus even increased its prerogatives by entrusting to it 
judgment on all political cases and important trials. The people also 
retained its assemblies, but as a formality only, for public elections were 
but the confirmationof the choice made by the prince. 

Military and Financial Organization. — As the power of Augustus 
rested on the soldiers, he made the army permanent and stationed it along 
the frontier, in entrenched camps, so as to awe the barbarians. For these 
three or four hundred thousand men regulations determined the duration of 
service, veterancy and pay. Fleets at Frejus, Misena and Ravenna policed 
the Mediterranean; and flotillas were stationed on the Danube and the 
Euxine. As he was head of all the legions, and as, the generals fought under 
the auspices of the Imperator, none of them, accordingto Roman ideas, could 
thereafter obtain a triumph. The civil as well as the military administra- 
tion was reorganized. The Senate continued to send ev^ry year proconsuls 
into the interior provinces which the emperor left to it. The frontier prov- 
inces were governed by imperial legates who remained in office as long 
as the Prince pleased. This was a salutary innovation, for these officers, 
retained at duty for a long time, could study the needs of those under 
their administrations. 

As there were apparently two kinds of provinces, so there were two 
financial administrations, namely, the public treasury, aerarium, and the 
Prince's treasury, fiscus. The former, filled by the tributes from the Sena- 
torial provinces, was, moreover, opened to him by the Senate, so that he 
really disposed of all the financial resources of the empire, as he did of all 
its military forces. These resources were too weak to cover the new ex- 
penses; it was necessary therefore, to restore the custom houses and to 
create new imposts, the twentieth of inheritances, the hundredth of pro- 
visions sold, and the fines of the Julia-Poppaea law against bachelors. All 
these revenues added to the tributes of the provinces produced perhaps four 
or five hundred millions. 

Able Administration of Augustus. — But if everything belonged to 



154 The Caesarean Revolution 

Augustus, yet his time, his attentions, and his very fortune belonged to every- 
body. During his long journeys through the provinces, he comforted the 
almost bankrupt cities and rebuilt those that a scourge had destroyed. 
Tralles, Laodicaea and Paphos, ruined by earthquakes, reappeared with 
greater beauty. Even in a single year he paid out of his ow^n means all the 
taxes of the province of Asia. The general measures of the imperial ad- 
ministration harmonized wuth this conduct of the Prince, who was an example 
and a lesson to the governors. In the order of religious interests there was 
no violence except in Gaul, where human sacrifices were prohibited and 
Druidism was bitterly attacked. In order that taxation might be equitably 
established, it was necessary to draw up a general valuation; and Augustus 
had this done. Three surveyors traversed the empire and measured its dis- 
tances. This work served another end. The empire being known and 
measured, it was easy to make roads through it. Augustus repaired those 
of Italy, constructed those of Cisalpina, and covered the whole of Gaul and 
the Iberian peninsula with highways. Then a regular postal service was 
organized on these routes. The Prince's messengers and armies could 
move rapidly from one province to another; in this way commerce and 
civilization were gainers; and a new life circulated in that empire so ad- 
mirably situated around the Mediterranean. Augustus gave special 
attention to satisfying the people of Rome with amusements and distribu- 
tions. He embellished their city with many monuments, created an urban 
prefect and urban cohorts to watch over public tranquillity, and night guards 
to prevent or limit 'conflagrations; and he could boast of leaving in marble 
a city which he had found built of bricks. In the still barbarian western 
provinces he made new territorial divisions so as to wipe out the customs 
of the days of independence, and, to multiply the Roman element among 
those populations, he founded many colonies. During the triumvirate 
Octavius was often cruel; but Augustus was nearly always forgiving. He 
lived less as a prince than as a private citizen, unostentatious and clean, 
amid friends who were not always courtiers. 



CHAPTER X 



The Augustan Empire 



External Policy. — Defeat of Varus. — After Actium, Augustus had 
thought that wars had come to an end, and by closing the doors of the 
temple of Janus he declared that the new monarchy had renounced the 
spirit of conquest which had animated the RepubHc. He had on hand, 
in fact, no serious wars in the Orient, where the mere threat of an expedi- 
tion made the Parthians testore the banners of Crassus. But in Europe 
the empire had not yet found its natural boundaries. In order to shelter 
Italy, Greece and Macedonia from invasions, it was necessary to be master 
of the course of the Danube; and so as not to be disturbed on the left bank 
of the Rhine, it was incumbent to drive the Germanic tribes far from 
its right bank. This was the object of a series of undertakings, all of which 
w^ere successful except one. In the year i6 B. C. Dfusus and Tiberius 
subdued the tribes on the northern slope of the Alps, in Rhaetia, Vindelicia 
and Noricum, which carried the Roman frontier to the upper Danube. 
In the year 9 B. C. Drusus crossed the lower Rhine and penetrated as far 
as the banks of the Elbe. After his death his brother Tiberius took up his 
winter quarters in the very heart of Germany, and from that camp Roman 
influence extended step by step. But while this work was being carried 
out in the north, the Marcoman Marbod was establishing in Bohemia 
a kingdom defended by seventy thousand infantry and four thousand 
cavalry, disciplined in Roman fashion. Augustus became alarmed at 
this power on his frontier, and a powerful army was put in readiness to 
go and destroy that nascent and already formidable State beyond the Dan- 
ube when the Pannonians and Dalmatians rose up behind it. Tiberius was 
artful enough to bring Marbod to terms, and was then able to attack the 
rebels with fifteen legions; but he succeeded only after three campaigns and 
a determined resistance. It v/as none too soon, for, only five days after the 
final submission of the Pannonians and the Dalmatians, it was learned at 
Rome that three legions, drawn into an ambuscade by a young chief of the 
Cherusci, Arminius (Hermann), had perished there along with their general. 
Varus. It was northern Germany that was rising and driving Roman 
domination back to the Rhine (9 A. D.). "Varus, Varus! restore to me 



155 



156 The Augustan Empire 

my legions,'' Augustus sorrowfully exclaimed. Fortunately Marbod, 
jealous of Hermann, did not move, and Augustus, with his mind set at 
ease regarding the Danube region, could send Tiberius into Gaul. This 
general fortified all the Rhine strongholds, restored discipline, and, so as 
somewhat to revive confidence, even risked the eagles beyond that river. 
After him Germanicus remained at the head of the legions that garrisoned 
the left bank of the Rhine. The enemy, satisfied with having conquered, 
did not yet pass from resistance to attack, but the glory of a long peace- 
ful reign was tarnished by that disaster. Augustus died five years later. 
His name has been given to one of the great ages of literature. Pos- 
terity, in fact, sees him surrounded by Titus Livy, Horace and Virgil, whom 
other great writers had preceded by only a few years in the order of time, 
such as Lucretius, Catullus, Cicero, Sallust and Caesar. We have nothing 
left from Varius, a tragic poet very much vaunted in that age; but there 
have come down to us many elegies by Tibullus, Gallus and Propertius, and 
nearly all the works of Ovid. The polygrapher, Varro, was still living; 
Trogus Pompeius was writing a general history that has, unfortunately, been 
lost, Celsus a sort of encyclopedia of which only the books relating to medi- 
cine survive, and the Grecian Strabo his great geography. 

Beginnings of the Reign of Tiberius. — Tiberius, the son of a former 
husband of Livia, adopted by Augustus and associated by him in the 
tribunitial power, succeeded him without difficulty. Two revolts, of the 
Pannonian and Rhenish legions, were quelled, and, to keep these restless 
spirits occupied, Tiberius charged Germanicus, who was at one and the 
same time his nephew and his adopted son, to lead the army beyond the 
Rhine. He penetrated to the Teutoburgian forest, where Varus's three 
legions had perished. Nowhere did the Germans resist. In the following 
campaign they were more bold and dared to await the Roman army, but 
were defeated in the great battle of Indistavisus. A second action was 
a second massacre — ^Varus was avenged. Then the Romans made their 
way back to Gaul (16 A. D.). There Germanicus found letters from Ti- 
berius recalling him to Rome for a second consulate and a great mission 
to Asia. In Rome Tiberius governed without violence, refusing honors and 
the temples offered to him, and rejecting the base flatteries of the Senate, 
like a man who knew their worth. As for the provinces, he sent to them 
the ablest governors, avoided increasing the tributes, and alleviated the too 
great poverty there. Twelve cities of Asia ruined by an earthquake were 
exempted from all taxes for five years. Tiberius practised what he recom- 
mended to his provincial governors: "A good shepherd shears his sheep, 
but does not flay them. " 



The Augustan Empire i57 

In the Orient Germanicus, even without drawing the sword, kept in 
restraint the Parthians, who let him give the crown of Armenia to a faith- 
ful vassal of the empire and make a province of Cappadocia and Comagene. 
On returning from a journey which he made to Egypt he had bitter alter- 
cations with Piso, governor of Syria. His death, which occurred some time 
afterwards, was attributed to poison, and Piso's unseemly joy seemed to 
designate the culprit. To regain his government, which he had abandoned 
rather than obey the emperor's son, he did not recoil from civil war. Set- 
ting sail in spite of orders, he returned to Italy, where accusers were await- 
ing him, and there committed suicide (20 A. D.). Tacitus hints, but dares 
not assert, that Tiberius had poisoned Germanicus, and then got away 
with Piso. 

Tiberius the Tyrant. — The first nine years of the reign of Tiberius 
were fehcitous; but, after the death of his son Drusus, there was a com- 
plete change. He had a favorite, Sejanus, who had saved his life one day 
when a roof collapsed on him and whom he had appointed prefect of the 
praetorship. Dazzled by his good fortune, Sejanus wished to rise higher, 
and thought it would be possible for him to attain the supreme rank by 
overthrowing that old man and his children. His first victim was the 
emperor's own son, Drusus, whom he poisoned. This death had a sad 
effect on Tiberius. He felt that, deprived of two sons in the prime of 
life, he would soon be alone and exposed to attack; and as these two 
deaths increased the hopes of parties, they also increased his suspicions. 
He saw everywhere intrigues and plots that were not always imaginary, 
and to ward them oflF he pitilessly used a terrible weapon, the old law of 
majesty, enacted of old for the people and now put at the service of him 
to whom the people had been given. One of the friends of Germanicus, 
Silius, the victor over the Gallic rebel, Sacrovir, and after him the repub- 
lican Cremutius Cordus, under accusation on account of his history of 
the civil wars, were the first victims. About this time Tiberius, then 
sixty-nine years old, left Rome for the last time (26 A. D.), and withdrew 
to the delightful island of Capraea, at the entrance to the bay of Naples. 
Sejanus made himself intermediary between him and the empire; and, 
by stimulating the old man's suspicions, led him to become the executioner 
of all the members of his family, whom he pointed out to him as impatient 
heirs coveting his heritage. He sacrificed Sabinus, the most zealous 
adherent of Agrippina, widow of Germanicus. That princess, whose 
misfortunes and virtues excuse character, was shut up on the island of 
Pandataria, where, four years later, she let herself die of hunger. Of 
her three sons, Nero was either put to death or committed suicide; Drusus 



158 The Augustan Empire 

was cast into a prison, where he starved himself to death; the youth of Caius 
protected him from the fears of Tiberius. The whole family of Germanicus 
having been as it were destroyed, Sejanus, so as to come closer to his object, 
boldly asked for the hand of the widow of Drusus. This was almost 
equivalent to asking to be the emperor's heir, and she was refused him. 
He resolved to strike down the emperor himself and won accomplices 
even in the palace. But Tiberius had seen through his conduct; and by 
steps full of artifice he isolated his prefect of the praetorium and then had 
him suddenly arrested at a meeting of the whole Senate. The people 
hacked his corpse to pieces, and many executions followed his death. 
Alongside the pUce on Capraea where Tiberius had his many executions 
carried out there arose those palaces which, according to Tacitus, were the 
scenes of infamous orgies. Though Tiberius was a stickler for peace, yet 
his reign was troubled by wars in Gaul, Africa, Frisia, and on the Euphrates. 
The most important event of that reign, the founding of Christianity, 
is reserved for separate treatment later on. He died in 37 A. D., at the 
age of seventy-eight. 

Caligula and Claudius. — Rome welcomed with acclamations the 
accession of Caligula, son of Germanicus, and the new emperor at first 
justified every hope. But in consequence of a malady which seemed to 
have effected his reason, he warred against the gods, whom he insulted, 
against nature, whose laws he wished to violate, against the nobility of 
Rome, whom he decimated, and against the provinces, which he exhausted 
by his exactions. In less than two years he spent the savings of Tiberius, 
three hundred millions, in mad profusions. To fill his treasury he took 
the fortunes of the rich, and often besides their life also. One day in Gaul, 
having played dice and lost, he had the registers of the province brought to 
him and marked the most heavily taxed citizens for death. For four years 
the world put up with that furious madman who wished the Roman people 
had but one head so that he could cut it off with a single blow. On January 
24, 41, a tribune of the praetorians, Chereas, cut his throat. 

The murderer was a republican. It seemed a favorable opportunity 
for the Senate to regain power. It tried to do so, and for three days men 
could imagine they were living in a republic. But this was not the view of 
the soldiers, who carried off to their camp Clajudius, a brother of Germanicus 
then fifty years old, a man of letters who had written a history of the Etrus- 
cans and another of the Carthaginians, but sickly and timid, whose lack 
of firmness had deplorable results. Under him the real masters of the 
empire were his wife, the bestial Messalina, and his freedmen Polybius, 
Narcissus and Pallas, who, however, effected some wise reforms and con- 



The Augustan Empire 159 

structed some useful works, such as a harbor at Ostia, the draining of Lake 
Fucinus, etc. Though he asked the Senate to make some concessions to the 
Gauls, yet he persecuted the druids, whose worship he strove to abolish. 
Abroad, Mauritania and half of Britain were conquered, the Germans were 
kept in restraint, the Bosphorus was held in obedience, Thrace, Lycia and 
Judea were made provinces, and dissensions among the Parthians were 
long encouraged. But nine or ten plots hatched against the life of Claudius 
brought terrible reprisals. Thirty-five senators and three hundred knights 
perished. Many fell victims to the hatred of that Messalina who, in order 
to brave the emperor, the laws and public decency, contracted a second 
union before death or divorce had broken the first, and married, according 
to the ordinary form, the senator Silius. The freedmen, in alarm for their 
own safety, wrung a death sentence from Claudius (48) and put in Mes- 
salina's place a niece of the emperor, Agrippina, who made for herself 
another sort of celebrity. The new empress, wishing to secure for her son, 
Nero, then eleven years old, the inheritance that of right belonged to the 
young Britannicus, son of Claudius, surrounded the emperor with her 
creatures, made Burrus praetorian prefect, and Seneca preceptor to Nero; 
and, to complete her work, she poisoned Claudius (54). 

Nero, the Last of the Julians. — On his coming to the throne Clau- 
dius, so as to secure the fidelity of his soldiers, had given nearly eight hun- 
dred dollars to each praetorian and a proportionate sum to every legionary. 
This unfortunate innovation the army made a law, and it turned the empire 
into a domain to be sold to the highest bidder. Accordingly, revolutions 
kept on multiplying, since the soldiers had an interest in multiplying the 
vacancies of the throne in order that the right of ascending it might be 
the more frequently purchased from them. Nero began well. Men 
praised for a long time the first five years of his reign. "Would that I knew 
not how to write! " he exclaimed one day when a death sentence was brought 
to him to be signed. Seneca and Burrus agreed to strive to restrain their 
pupil's impetuous passions, but Agrippina's ambition brought on the ex- 
plosion. In league with the freedman Pallas, she hoped that nothing would 
be done in the palace without her. The emperor's two tutors, in order to 
prevent a domination that had degraded Claudius, had the freedman dis- 
graced and, when Agrippina threatened to bring Britannicus to the camp of 
the praetorians, Nero poisoned his adopted brother (55). Some time after 
that he robbed Otho of his wife, Poppaea, and, irritated at his mother's 
reproaches, he caused a ship carrying her to be sunk in the open sea. As 
she escaped by swimming, he sent soldiers to slay her. His wife Octavia, 
and perhaps Burrus, met the same fate, and the Romans saw him drive 



i6o The Augustan Empire 

chariots in the arena and go on the stage to recite verses to his own accom- 
paniment on the lyre! Whether or not he caused the burning of Rome in 
the year 64, and the historian Tacitus, then about fourteen years old, seems 
inclined to believe him guilty, he used that catastrophe as a pretext to 
persecute the Christians, on v^hom he had most hideous tortures inflicted 
as part of a spectacular exhibition v^hich he gave in his palace gardens. 
In order to provide for his prodigalities, he multiplied exiles and con- 
demnations. At last a conspiracy was formed, and many senators, knights, 
and even soldiers took part in it. Seneca and his nephew, the poet Lucan, 
and the virtuous Thrasea were compelled to have their veins opened. 
That wild madman had the sickly vanity of bad artists. So as to find more 
worthy appreciators of his talents, in the year 66 he made a journey to 
Greece, where he appeared in all the games, and picked up a number of 
crowns, even at Olympia, though he had fallen in the midst of the stadium; 
but he paid for these plaudits by proclaiming the liberty of Greece. The 
empire, however, was beginning to grow weary of obeying a bad singer, 
as he was called by Vindex, propraetor of Gaul, who oflTered the empire 
to Galba. In spite of that general's death, the revolt succeeded and carried 
Rome with it. Even in the capital Nero was abandoned by everybody 
and had to flee, as he could not find even a gladiator to kill him. He took 
refuge on the farm of one of his freedmen, and, when he saw himself on 
the point of being captured, he stuck a dagger into his throat, exclaiming: 
"What an artist the world is losing!" With him became extinct the race 
of the Caesars, which, since the great Julius, had, moreover, been continued 
only by adoption (June, 68). 

Civil War — Galba, Otho and Vitellius. — ^The praetorians demanded 
a rich donative that had been promised to them in the name of Galba. 
"I choose, and do not purchase, my soldiers," he answered. These proud 
words were not seconded by vigorous acts, and a former friend of Nero's, 
an ambitious man overwhelmed with debts, found it an easy matter to stir 
up the praetorians, who murdered Galba. But the legions of the Rhine had 
already proclaimed at Cologne their general Vitellius as emperor. They 
marched on Italy, and near Cremona won a great battle, in consequence of 
which Otho committed suicide. Vitellius was especially known as being 
brutally voracious. He let his soldiers do what they pleased, and was con- 
cerned only for his pleasures, never dreaming that the legions of the Orient 
could be tempted to imitate what those of Gaul had done for Galba, the 
praetorians for Otho, and the legions of the Rhine for himself. The profits 
of a revolution were now too certain for each army not to want to have them. 
Vespasian was then at the head of large forces entrusted with subduing the 



i 



The Augustan Empire i6i 

rebellious Jews. His troops having proclaimed him emperor, he left to 
his son, Titus, the task of besieging Jerusalem, went himself to take posses- 
sion of Egypt, and made Mucianus march on Italy. A legionary tribune, 
Antonius Primus, forestalled him, beat the troops of Vitellius near Cremona, 
and, in the course of a few days, captured Rome. Vitellius, after having 
endured many outrages, was murdered (December 20, 69). 

The Reign of Vespasian. — Flavius Vespasianus, the son of a collector 
of customs, was a man of simple habits who had made his way by merit. 
In Egypt he learned of the successes of his generals and of his rival's death. 
But two wars were still in progress. One of them, that against the Jews, 
bitter, but without peril to the empire, was in charge of Titus; the other, 
which might shake the realm to its very foundations, was the revolt of the 
Batavian Civilis. This man, of the royal race of his own people, had re- 
solved to make that people free. He called the Gauls to independence and 
the Germans to pillage of the provinces. The Gauls could not come to an 
understanding among themselves, and one of Vespasian's generals, Cerealis, 
defeated Civilis, who withdrew into his island, there organized a strong 
resistance and at last obtained honorable peace for the Batavians. They 
remained allies of Rome, but not tributaries, on condition of furnishing 
soldiers. During these events Titus was putting an end to the revolt of 
the Jews (65-70), who, angered by the exactions of their last governors, 
had heroically renewed the struggle of the Machabees against foreign 
domination. They believed the time had come for the Messiah whom 
their sacred books promised them, and, refusing to recognize Him in the 
holy Victim of Golgotha, they thought He was about to manifest Himself, 
glorious and powerful, amid the clash and din of arms. The insurrection 
had won over Galilee, where the historian Josephus organized resistance. 
Vespasian and Titus shut it up within the capital of Judea. After a 
memorable siege Jerusalem fell. The Temple was burned, the plough 
passed over its site, and the final dispersion of the Hebrew people began 
(70). Eleven hundred thousand Jews had fallen in this brief war, most 
of them at the capital. 

While Vespasian's generals were making his arms triumph, at Rome he 
himself was degrading the unworthy senators and knights, bettering the 
finances, which Nero had left in a deplorable state, restoring the Capitol 
which had been destroyed by fire, constructing the immense Coliseum and 
the temple of Peace, founding a library, and instituting, for the teaching of 
rhetoric, professorships endowed by the State. But Vespasian felt obliged 
to drive from Rome the Stoics, who ostentatiously affected republican opin- 
ions. It was also because of his too great freedom of language that the 

11 



1 62 The Augustan Empire 

most respected of the senators, Helvidius Priscus, was exiled and then put 
to death, but against the emperor's intentions. A serious minded man of 
business and order, Vespasian laughed at flatteries as at apotheosis. "I 
feel I am becoming a god," he said when he felt his last hour approach. 
But he wished to rise, adding: "An emperor should die standing" (June 

23> 79-)- 

Titus and Domitian. — His successor was his son Titus, who had dis- 
tinguished himself in the wars of Germany and Britain, and especially in 
that of Judea, but whose debaucheries and fits of violence were dreaded. 
He disappointed everybody, and his gentleness and aflfable manners won 
him the surname of "Delight of mankind." It was he who said he had 
lost a day when he had forgotten to do some good. Frightful calamities 
distracted this too short reign. A conflagration lasting three days devasta- 
ted a part of Rome; a plague decimated Italy, and, on November i, 79, a 
sudden eruption of Vesuvius vomited masses of ashes and lava that buried 
Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiae, where the naturalist Pliny the Elder 
perished. Then commandant of the Misena fleet, he wished to have a 
close view of the terrible phenomenon, and was smothered by the ashes 
or crushed by the stones thrown by the volcano. Titus reigned only twenty- 
seven months (81). 

His brother Domitian was at once proclaimed. In his first acts he dis- 
played stern severity, rendered and caused to be rendered strict justice, 
repressed every abuse he could learn of, and, by his active watchfulness, 
assured to the provinces an almost paternal government. The frontiers 
were well guarded, and the barbarians, even the Dacians, who were be- 
coming formidable, kept in restraint. But as his need for money increased 
with his fears, he became greedy r.nd ere long cruel. Informers reappeared, 
and with them executions. His cousin Sabinus was put to death because 
the crier who was to nominate him for consul had carelessly called him 
emperor, and many rich men were stricken down accused of high treason 
because of their wealth. A revolt of the governor of upper Germany 
increased the tyranny, because Domitian thought he was surrounded in 
Rome itself by the rebel's accomplices. Many senators perished. Some 
were accused of a new crime, that of judaizing — they were really Chris- 
tians. Under this prete^ft his own niece Domitilla and his cousin, Flavius 
Clemens, who might have succeeded him as the first Christian emperor, were 
condemned and put to death. At last a plot was formed among the palace 
folk, who murdered him on September 18, 96. It was he, however, who 
completed the conquest of the greater part of Britain. Thither Vespa- 
sian had sent Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus, who pacified the island, 



The Augustan Empire 163 

but did not succeed in subduing the mountaineers of Caledonia. Only 
the south of Scotland was added to the province. So as to protect it 
against the incursions of the Picts, Agricola built a line of fortified posts 
between the friths of Clyde and Forth, and Roman civilization, favored by 
the many colonists whom he called in, soon took possession of Britain. 

The Antonines — Nerva and Trajan. — ^The Flavian family had be- 
come extinct through its last member's hostility to the new religion which, 
after a struggle of over two hundred years more, was to gain the upper hand 
over Graeco-Roman polytheism. The Senate hastened to proclaim one of 
the conspirators, the aged consular Nerva, as his successor. With this 
prince begins a period of eighty-four years which men have called the 
happiest time of mankind, the epoch of the Antonines. Nerva displayed 
good intentions, but had neither strength nor time to realize them; but he 
adopted as his successor the Spaniard Trajan, the empire's best general. 

When Nerva died (January 27, 98), Trajan was at Cologne. Acknowl- 
edged as emperor by the Senate, the people and the armies, he remained 
another year on the banks of the Rhine, in order to complete the pacifica- 
tion of the frontiers and the restoration of discipline. He wished to enter 
Rome on foot, and the empress Plotina followed his example. He drove 
out informers, diminished the taxes, and sold the many palaces which 
his predecessors had acquired by confiscations. To encourage the free 
population, he distributed to the people of Italy revenues intended for the 
support of poor children. The Senate could almost believe it had returned 
to the time of its former power, for it deliberated on serious affairs and 
really distributed the offices. Trajan even restored elections to the com- 
itia; at least the candidates seemed as of old to solicit the suffrages of the 
people. He himself canvassed in the Campus Martins, mingling in the 
crowd. The object of the monuments which he raised was public utility 
or the ornamentation of the city, such as Trajan's column, which still 
records his exploits. Among his works the most important were the 
completion of a highway that traversed the empire, from the Black Sea 
to Gaul, and the repairing of the road across the Pontine marshes. At 
his own expense he constructed the harbors of Ancona and Civita Vecchia, 
established colonies in various places, either as military stations or as 
places of commerce, and founded the Ulpian library, which became the 
richest in Rome. There are only two reproaches to be made against him — 
he did not possess the sobriety of Cato, and he persecuted the Christians. 
He forbade their being sought after, but ordered those condemned who 
would present themselves. He himself consigned Ignatius, bishop of 
Antioch, to the lions. 



i64 The Augustan Empire 

His reign was the most warlike of all those the empire knew. He led 
an expedition in person against the Dacians (loi), crossed the Danube at 
the head of sixty thousand men, defeated the barbarians in three battles, 
captured their capital, and obliged them to sue for peace (103). In 104 
they arose again. Trajan built over the river a stone bridge whose remains 
are still to be seen, penetrated into Dacia on several occasions, defeated 
Decebalus, who killed himself, and reduced the country into provinces. 
Many colonists were sent thither, and flourishing cities arose there; and to- 
day a whole people on the banks of the Danube still speaks a dialect that is 
almost the language of Trajan's contemporaries. In the Orient he made 
Armenia a province. The kings of Colchis and Iberia promised fuller 
obedience, and the Albanians received the prince whom he gave to them. 
One of his lieutenants, Cornelius Palma, had already subdued a part of the 
Arabs. Trajan penetrated into Mesopotamia, captured Ctesiphon, Seleucia 
and Susa, and went down to the Persian Gulf. These rapid conquests 
could not be lasting. The vanquished arose everywhere during the em- 
peror's absence, and the Jev/s revolted once more on all sides. Seas of 
blood flowed. Trajan had not even the consolation of seeing the end of this 
formidable uprising; he died at Selinuns in Cilicia (August 11, 117). 

The Third of the Antonines. — Hadrian abandoned his predecessor's 
useless conquests in the Orient, and, so as to put a stop in Britain to the 
incursions of the Caledonian mountaineers, from the mouth of the Tyne to 
Solway Frith he raised the wall of the Picts, many remains of which are 
still to be seen. He had but a single war, but it was atrocious, that against 
the Jews. He wiped out the name of the city of David, which he called 
Mlia. Capitolina; and there he set up altars to all the gods and forbade the 
Jews to practise their bloody baptism. Therefore they were now threatened 
with the loss of their religious nationality as well as their political, which 
they had already forfeited. At the call of their doctor Akiba, they had 
recourse once more to the chance of arms, under the command of Barcoche- 
bas. Son of the Star, who represented himself as the ever expected Messiah. 
Nearly six hundred thousand Jews perished, and what remained of the 
people were sold into slavery. 

His internal administration showed superior ability. He relieved the 
provinces of dues in arrears for sixteen years, and wiped out the republican 
forms that had, since the time of Augustus, to the great detriment of many, 
perpetuated the lie of Roman liberty. He divided the offices into State, 
palace and army charges, the civil magistracies having the first rank, 
and the military functions the last. So as to expedite business matters, 
he instituted four chancellorships, and the praetorian prefects, invested 



fl 



The Augustan Empire 165 

with an authority at one and the same time civil and military, constituted as 
it were a higher ministry. In the last place, Salvius Julianus, by order 
of the emperor, collected the old praetorian edicts, classified their pro- 
visions, and formed a sort of code which, under the name of Perpetual 
Edict, received the force of law in the year 131. The army was, like the 
palace and the higher administration, subjected to a strict reform. As 
regarded discipline, exercises, and the age at which one became capable of 
promotion, Hadrian made a large number of regulations that survived him. 
He visited all the provinces, one after another, traveling most of the time 
on foot, unostentatiously, surrounded only by a few lawyers and artists. 
Many cities were decorated by him with splendid monuments, such as 
Nimes, where he perhaps built the arena in honor of Plotina; Athens, where 
he spent two winters; Alexandria, and Rome, which owes to him its Moles 
Hadriani (Castle of St. Angelo) and the bridge connecting both parts of the 
city. He encouraged commerce and industry, and made the slaves amen- 
able to the courts only, and no longer to their masters' caprice. 

The favors conferred by this prince make us tend to forget his scanda- 
lous morals, which, moreover, were those of the time, the influence of Antin- 
ous, whom he made a god, and some acts of severity that seemed cruel. In 
the very early days of his reign the Senate had, without waiting for his 
orders, caused the execution of four consulars accused of conspiracy. To- 
wards the end of his life, when he had adopted Verus, and, at his death, 
Antoninus, plots or his suspicions were renewed, and several senators became 
their victims. He died at Baiae on July 12, 138. 

The Reign of Antoninus Pius. — Antonine, a native of Nimes, adopted 
by Hadrian on condition that he in his turn would adopt Marcus Aurelius 
and Lucius Verus, reigned twenty-three years in profound peace and received 
from his grateful contemporaries the surname of Father of Mankind. A 
wise economy in financial administration furnished him with the means for 
founding useful institutions; and he was able to come to the aid of cities 
afflicted by some scourge, such as Rome, Antioch, Narbonne and Rhodes, 
which had been desolated by conflagrations and earthquakes. "A prince's 
wealth," he said, "is the public's blessing." Two conspiracies were dis- 
covered against him, but only the leaders perished. A defence of Chris- 
tianity, written by the philosopher Justin, won for the Christians, already 
numerous in Rome and the provinces, toleration from the emperor and the 
magistrates. Antonine waged no important war; mention is made only 
of minor expeditions to police the frontiers. 

The Philosopher Emperor. — Marcus Aurelius, surnamed the Phil- 



i66 The Augustan Empire 

osopher, assumed the task of continuing the administration of his three 
predecessors. He had shared the title of Augustus with Verus, his son-in- 
law and adopted brother. Under serious circumstances he sent him to the 
Orient; but at Antioch Verus concerned himself only with his debauches, 
leaving the able Avidius Cassius to take Ctesiphon and Seleucia. A 
terrible plague raged in Rome; earthquakes desolated the empire, and the 
German tribes near the Danube arose; the Stoic philosopher who occupied 
the imperial throne did not allow himself to be frightened, and, amid the 
perils of war against the Marcomans, he wrote the admirable maxims of 
Stoic wisdom in the twelve books of his work entitled "Eis Heauton" 
("On Oneself"). Almost the whole barbarian world was in motion. The 
Sarmatian Roxolans, Vandals, and other tribes of which we know nothing 
but the name, crossed the Danube and penetrated to the neighborhood of 
Aquilaea. The two emperors marched against them, and the barbarians 
withdrew without fighting so as to make sure of their booty. A certain 
number of them even accepted lands which Marcus Aurelius gave them 
or service among the auxiliaries of the legions. Verus died on his return 
from this expedition (December, 169). The Germans, who had not been 
conquered, reappeared once more under the walls of Aquilaea. In order 
to find the money necessary for this war, Marcus Aurelius ordered that 
the valuable articles and jewels of the imperial palace be sold. He had 
to arm slaves and gladiators, and to enroll barbarians (172). The enemy 
withdrew before him, and the emperor followed the Quadi into their country, 
where, on the banks of the Gran, he incurred serious danger. A downpour 
accompanied by lightning and thunder saved him, and gave rise to the 
tradition of the Thundering Legion, made up wholly of Christians. A 
treaty of peace with several nations seemed to bring this war to a glorious 
end. From the banks of the Danube Marcus Aurelius promptly reached 
Syria (175) in order to quell the revolt of Cassius, who was slain by his 
soldiers. Almost immediately the Marcomans, the Bastarni and the Goths 
renewed their incursions (178). The unhappy emperor, whom fortune 
compelled to spend his life in camp, hastened to march against them with 
his son Commodus. He died, before having ended this war, on March 
7, 180, at Vindebona (Vienna). 

Inglorious End of a Glorious Dynasty. — Commodus, nineteen years 
old, hastened to conclude peace with the Marcomans and the Quadi, by 
taking twenty thousand of these barbarians into the service of the empire, 
and returned to Rome to combat for over seven years in the arena, to drive 
chariots and to play the part of Hercules. The prefect of the guards, 
Perennis, at first entrusted with all the cares of government, was murdered 



The Augustan Empire 167 

in 180, aha was succeeded, as prefect of the prsetorium and favorite of 
the prince, by the freedman Cleander, a Phrygian, who made money out of 
everything, even out of the Hfe and honor of the citizens. Three years later 
the avaricious and cruel favorite was killed in a popular sedition occasioned 
by plague and famine. Commodus then issued death sentences against 
the most virtuous men, his neighbors, the Senate, and even the great lawyer 
Salvius Julianus, and gave every liberty to the praetorians. But as those 
who came closest to him were most menaced, it was their hand that struck 
him down. His concubine Marcia, the chamberlain Electus ,and the pre- 
fect of the guards Laetus, w^hom he proposed to put to death, had him stran- 
gled by an athlete (December, 192). The decline of the Roman empire 
had really begun with this prelude to the dreary record of the third century. 

Military Anarchy — from Pertinax to Septimius Severus. — 
Pertinax, prefect of the city, proclaimed emperor by the murderers of 
Commodus, was acknowledged by the Senate and the praetorians; but, 
wishing to restore order in the State and the finances, he dissatisfied the 
soldiers, who murdered him in his palace (March 28, 193). Then began 
nameless and happily unexampled scenes. The soldiery literally put up 
the empire at auction. Two bidders presented themselves, who vied with 
each other in promises, and the monarchy of Augustus was adjudged to 
the old consular Didius Julianus for six million two hundred and fifty 
thousand drachmae to each soldier. The sale over, the praetorians in order 
of battle led Didius to the palace, and the senators accepted their choice. 
He had promised more than he could pay. The creditors, implacable 
towards their imprudent debtor, would no doubt have overthrown him 
had they not been prevented by the frontier legions, who themselves wished 
to give the empire away. The legions of Britain proclaimed their own 
general, Albinus; those of Syria, Perennius Niger; those of Illyria, the 
African, Septimius Severus. The latter, being closest to Rome, at once 
set out for the capital, and the Senate, encouraged by his approach, de- 
clared Didius a public enemy, had him put to death, punished the murderers 
of Pertinax, and acknowledged Severus as emperor. 

He broke up the praetorians; but, instead of abolishing that turbulent 
guard, he remained satisfied with changing it, and made it even more 
numerous. In Asia Minor he defeated Niger, who was killed just as he was 
fleeing to the Parthians (194), and near Lyons Albinus (197), whose head 
he sent to the Senate with a threatening letter. On returning to Rome, he 
there multiplied punishments — forty-one senatorial families were wiped 
out by the executioner's axe. So as to shed a little glory on these cruelties, 
he went to take Seleucia and Ctesiphon from the Parthians, who had made an 



i68 The Augustan Empire 

alliance with Niger; but he returned to order a persecution of the Chris- 
tians, in spite of the eloquent defences of Tertullian and Minutius Felix. 
The chief instigator of these cruelties was a minister, Plautianus, who, 
accused in his turn of conspiracy by Bassianus Caracalla, the emperor's 
eldest son (203), to whom he had betrothed his daughter, was put to death 
and succeeded by the lawyer Papinianus. Severus administered the 
finances economically. At his death seven years' supply of wheat was 
found in the granaries of Rome. Military discipline was strictly main- 
tained; but the soldiers at the same time acquired privileges, an increase of 
pay, and distinctions. After a few years' rest, Severus was called to Britain 
by a revolt, which he had no difficulty in quelling. He penetrated far into 
the mountains of the Caledonians; but, unceasingly harassed, and worn out 
by constant attacks that cost him fifty thousand men, he fell back on the 
policy of Antoninus, and built a wall from one shore to the other, along the 
line marked out by Agricola. During this expedition he had been constant- 
ly ill. His son Bassianus, called Caracalla, from the name of a Gallic 
garment which he loved to wear, could not, however, await his approaching 
end, and tried to assassinate him. From that time the emperor's illness 
grew worse. He expired saying: "I have been everything, and everything 
is nothing." His last word of command had been: "Laboremus!" ("Let 
us work! "). He left two sons, Caracalla and Ceta (211). 

From Caracalla to Alexander Severus. — The two princes had 
already disturbed the palace with their quarrels. On returning to Rome, 
Caracalla stabbed his brother in their mother's arms. Papinianus, who 
refused to make a public defence of the fratricide, was put to death, and with 
him perished twenty thousand of Geta's followers. Caracalla made his 
cruelty felt in all the provinces, but especially at Alexandria, where, in 
revenge for some epigrams, he ordered a massacre of the disarmed people. 
A centurion, who had an insult to avenge, slew him (217). 

The army then elected the prefect of the guards, Macrinus, who, after 
a bloody battle with the Parthians in Mesopotamia, purchased peace for 
fifty million denarii; but the severe measures which he adopted to restore 
discipline alienated men's minds from him. The soldiers mutinied in their 
camp, proclaimed the young and handsome high priest of Emesa, Bassianus, 
and murdered Macrinus (218). Bassianus, better known by the name of 
the Syrian god, Elagabal, whose priest he was, carried to Rome the most 
shocking passions of the Orient, the impurest pleasures, the maddest 
luxury, and a depravity that would make Nero blush. He formed a senate 
of women, and, like the great king, he wanted to be adored. His palace 
was sanded v/ith gold and silver dust, and he filled his fish ponds with 




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GREAT PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



The Augustan Empire 169 

rose water in which to bathe. The soldiers themselves soon became 
horrified at this monstrously effeminate emperor, who wore woman's gar- 
ments. On March ii, 222, they slew him along with his mother Soemis, 
and saluted as emperor his cousin Alexander, a boy of fourteen, who re- 
mained under the tutelage of his grandmother Moesa and his mother 
Mammaea. 

The two empresses strove to develop in the young prince the virtues 
which nature had planted in him. They gave him as ministers the lawyers 
Paul and Ulpian, and formed for him a council of twelve senators. The 
empire had several years of peace during the reign of this prince, who had 
engraved on the front of his palace these words, the basis of social moral- 
ity: "Do to others what you would have others do to yourself;" but his 
hand was not strong enough to keep the soldiers in discipline; one day they 
cut their prefect Ulpian's throat before his very eyes. 

The destruction of the Parthian kingdom and the founding of a second 
Persian empire by the Sassanide Artaxerxes (226) caused a war on the 
Euphrates; for the new monarch, who restored to the mountaineers of 
Persis the domination of which the Parthians had robbed them, said he was 
of the race of the old kings, and claimed all the provinces which Darius had 
formerly possessed. Alexander answered by attacking the Persians. The 
expedition seems not to have been very successful. The news of an invasion 
of Germans into Gaul and Illyria hastened his return. He hurried to the 
Rhine, and was slain there during a sedition (235). 

Six Emperors in Nine Years. — Maximin, whom the soldiers pro- 
claimed, was by birth a Thracian of Gothic origin, who in his youth had 
herded flocks. A sort of giant seven feet tall, it is said that he ate every 
day thirty pounds of flesh meat and drank an amphora of wine. That 
barbarian, who dared not go even once to Rome, treated the empire as a 
conquered country, pillaged temples and cities, and coined money out of 
their gods. Men soon grew weary of this. The proconsul of Africa, 
Gordian I, and his son, Gordian II, who pretended to be descended from 
the Gracchi and Trajan, were, in spite of their entreaties, proclaimed as 
emperors in that province. The Senate acknowledged them, and, when 
they had been overthrown, it proclaimed Pupianus and Balbinus. The 
people demanded that a son of the younger Gordian be declared Caesar. 
As for Maximin, he and his son were murdered (April, 238) outside of 
Aquilaea, which they were besieging. But almost immediately the Senate's 
two emperors were massacred in their palaces. The praetorians then 
declared Gordian III to be sole head of the empire — he was only thirteen 
years old. Misithaeus, his preceptor and father-in-lav/, ruled wisely in 



I70 The Augustan Empire 

his name; but that able adviser's death brought to the rank of praetorian 
prefect the Arabian Philip, who slew the emperor and took his place (Feb- 
ruary, 224). Under Gordian, mention was made of the Franks for the 
first time. This was a confederation of Germanic tribes that had been 
formed on the lower Rhine, as that of the Alamans had been organized 
on the upper Rhine. The latter were constantly threatening Rhaetia, and 
sometimes even Gaul, whose northern provinces the former invaded. At 
the other extremity of Germany the Goths had gradually come down from 
Scandinavia to the lower Danube and the Black Sea. For the time being 
they were the empire's most dangerous neighbors. 

Philip, Decius, and the Thirty Tyrants. — After five years the 
soldiers thought Philip's reign had lasted long enough, and revolts broke 
everywhere. At the same time the Goths crossed the Danube, and the 
senator Decius, w^hom he sent against them, was proclaimed by the troops. 
A battle was fought near Verona (September, 249), in which Philip was 
slain. The peace which the Church enjoyed during his reign led to the 
belief, probably erroneous, that he was a Christian. Decius, on the con- 
trary, cruelly persecuted it. But he reigned only two years, and perished 
in a great battle fought with the Goths in Moesia (251). The army acknowl- 
edged one of its generals, Gallus, who promised an annual tribute to the 
barbarians, thus encouraging them to return. iEmilianus, who defeated 
them, assumed the purple; but both were slain by their soldiers (253). 
Valerian, saluted as emperor, appointed as Caesar his son Gallienus, and 
strove to arrest the threatened dissolution of the empire. In 258 he re- 
covered from the Persians the great city of Antioch, and penetrated into 
Mesopotamia; but near Edessa he was defeated and captured (260) by 
King Sapor, who kept him prisoner and made him endure ignoble outrages 
until his death. Sapor had returned to Syria. Balista, praetorian prefect, 
made him recross the Euphrates, with the aid of the Arabian chief Odenath, 
w^ho was pov/erful enough to have himself acknowledged as Augustus by 
Gallienus (264). Palmyra, his capital, situated in an oasis three days' 
march from the Euphrates, had become rich and powerful, owing to its 
enormous trade. Imposing ruins still bear witness to its past greatness. 
Since his father's captivity Gallienus governed alone for eight years, which 
were but an incessant struggle against usurpers, barbarians, and calam- 
ities of all sorts that befell the empire. This is the age called that of 
the Thirty Tyrants. In reality there were only nineteen or twenty of 
them, and all perished b}- a violent death, like Saturnius, who said to his 
soldiers: "Comrades, you are losing a good general and making a very bad 
emperor," and, in fact, they slew him because of his severity. Odenath, a 



The Augustan Empire 171 

valorous prince, who in turn delivered the Orient from the Persians and 
from the Goths, who had landed in Asia Minor, was himself assassinated 
(267) by his nephew. His wife, Zenobia, had the murderer slain and 
succeeded her husband on the throne. Gaul was independent for fourteen 
years under five Gallic emperors, the last of whom, Tetricus, abdicated to 
Aurelian. To internal disorders were added invasions of the barbarians. 
The Goths and the Heruli had ravaged Greece and Asia Minor. One 
Goth wanted to burn the library at Athens, but another stopped him. 
"Let us," he said, "leave to our enemies those books that rob them of love 
of war." The Athenians, however, led by the historian Dexippus, had 
the honor of beating the brigands. 

Claudius, Aurelian and Tacitus. — Gallienus, who alone seemed 
to have a rightful claim amid all these usurpers, was stricken down by 
traitors while besieging one of his competitors in Milan. Before expiring 
he chose as his successor a Dalmatian, Claudius, who was then the most 
renowned general of the empire, and who had only time to rush into Mace- 
donia to head off three hundred thousand Goths. Victorious near Naissus, 
he was carried off by the plague. Aurelian took his place (270). He 
had first to repell an invasion of the Alamans, who penetrated through 
Rhaetia as far as Placentia, where they destroyed a Roman army, and 
thence to the shores of the Adriatic. There was terror in Rome. The 
Senate consulted the Sibylline Books, and, in accordance with their answers 
human victims were sacrificed. A victory won on the banks of the Me- 
taurus freed Italy; but the danger which Rome had incurred led the 
emperor to surround it with a strong wall. He was less fortunate against 
the Goths; by treaty Dacia was abandoned to them and its inhabitants 
transferred to Moesia. Peace having been restored on this frontier, he 
passed into the orient (273) to fight against the queen of Palmyra, a princess 
famous for her courage and rare intelligence, who dreamt of founding a 
great eastern empire. He took from her Syria, Egypt and a part of Asia 
Minor, where she was in command, defeated her near Antioch and Emesa, 
and besieged her in her capital. Palmyra, where she had taken refuge. 
When the city's resources were exhausted, Zenobia fled on dromedaries 
towards the Euphrates; but she was caught and brought before Aurelian. 
Her chief minister, the sophist Longinus, whose treatise "On the Sublime" 
we still have, suspected of being the author of an offensive letter sent by 
Zenobia to Aurelian, was put to death; the emperor reserved the queen 
for his triumph. In the west, Tacitus, who was governing Gaul, Spain 
and Britain, betrayed his own army and passed over to Aurelian, who 
appointed him governor of Lucania, and gave Zenobia a fine villa in the 



172 The Augustan Empire 

territory of Tibur. Freed from external embarrassments, Aurelian tried 
to restore order in the administration and discipline in the armies. So 
as to occupy the restless spirit of the legions, he was preparing an expedition 
against the Persians when his secretary, Mnesthaeus, accused of peculation 
and in fear of chastisement, had him assassinated (January, 275). The 
soldiers, ashamed of having let their glorious general be slain, forced the 
Senate to choose an emperor. That body selected the aged Tacitus, who 
died six months later. 

The Last of the Army's Puppets. — ^The soldiers then proclaimed 
Probus, who at once hurried to Gaul, which the Alamans had invaded. 
He recovered from them sixty cities, crossed the Rhine after them, and 
pursued them beyond the Neckar. The Germans delivered up to him 
sixteen thousand of their young warriors, whom he enrolled in his troops, 
but scattered through various sections of the army. In Illyria he defeated 
the Sarmatians, in Thrace the Getae, in Asia Minor the brigands of Isauria 
and Pamphylia, and in Egypt the Blemmyes, who had captured Coptos. 
Narses, king of Persia, frightened at these successes, asked for peace. 
On his way back through Thrace, Probus settled one hundred thousand 
Bastarnians on the lands of the empire, as he had already settled Germans 
in Britain and Franks on the shores of the Black Sea. He was preparing 
to march against the Persians when the severe toil which he imposed on 
his soldiers, whom he made to plant vines, drain marshes, etc., brought on 
a sedition in which he perished. Next day the soldiers bewailed him (282). 
They elected Carus, prefect of the guards, v/ho gave the title of Caesars 
to his two sons, Carinus and Numcrianus. The elder had the government 
of the west, and the younger, after having defeated the Goths and the 
Sarmatians, followed his father to the orient. Carus captured Seleucia 
and Ctesiphon, but was either killed by lightning or he succumbed to a mal- 
ady (December 25, 283), and Numerianus hastened to treat with the Per- 
sians. As he was leading his legions back towards the Bosphorus h? was 
slain by his father-in-law, Arius Aper (284). Five days later, under the 
walls of Chalcedon, the army proclaimed the Dalmatian, Diocle'ian, who 
slew Aper with his own hand, in the presence of the whole army. Carinus 
tried to overthrow the new emperor, but he was killed in battle, near 
Margus, in Moesia (285). 

Forty-five emperors had already donned the purple. Out of this 
number twenty-nine, not to mention the thirty tyrants, had been assassin- 
ated, and four or five others had perished by a violent death. What a 
proof of the bad organization of supreme power in the Roman empire! 
And it was about to be supplanted by one still worse. 



CHAPTER XI 



Imperial Roman Absolutism and Christianity 



Diocletian and the Tetrarchy. — The new emperor took upon him- 
self the twofold task of restoring order within and security on the frontiers. 
While the tyranny of the governors of Gaul brought about a rebellion of 
the peasants of that province (Bagaudae), the Alamans crossed the Danube 
and ravaged Rhaetia, Saxons pillaged the coasts of Britain and Gaul, 
Franks v/ent as far as Sicily and ravaged Syracuse, and Carausius, in- 
trusted with stepping the raids of these pirates, had himself proclaimed 
emperor in Britain (287). Alarmed at this critical situation, Diocletian 
took as his colleague one of his companions in arms Maximian (286), 
who assumed the surname Herculius — that of Jovius alreacy designated 
Diocletian. There being disorder and threats of invasion everywhere, 
the two August! deemed it necessary to associate with themselves two lieu- 
tenants, the Caesars Galerius and Constantius Chlorus (293). In the division 
of the empire Diocletian kept the East and 1 brace; Galerius had the Danu- 
bian provinces; Maximian Italy, Africa and Spain with Mauretania; and 
Constantius Gaul and Britain. The ordinances issued by each prince were 
effective in his colleagues' provinces. Diocletian remained the supreme 
head of the State, and, by his ability and spirit of conciliation, maintained 
harmony between already rival princes. He was the first of the Roman 
emperors to surround the throne with all the external pomp of the Asiatic 
courts; he wore a diadem, dressed in silk and gold, and made all who 
obtained permission to approach him adore the imperial divinity and 
majesty on their knees. He began to establish that hierarchy necessary 
in monarchical government to shelter the prince from barrack revolutions, 
but also that court despotism, that seraglio government, which destroys 
public spirit and raises the services rendered to the prince's person above 
those done to the State. Successful wars justified the choice of Diocletian. 
In the Orient the Persians had driven from the throne of Armenia a 
friend of the Romans and were threatening Syria. Galerius marched 
against them. A defeat inflicted on him was gloriously atoned for, and 
Narses ceded (297) Mesopotamia and five provinces beyond the Rhine, 

173 



174 Imperial Roman Absolutism and Christianity 

and the suzerainty over Armenia and Iberia at the foot of the Caucasus. 
This was the most glorious treaty which the empire had yet signed. So 
as to retain these conquests, Diocletian built many fortifications there. 
At the other extremity of the Roman world Constantius, after having 
driven the Franks from Gaul and Batavia, went to Britain and overcame 
(296) the usurper Alectus, who had succeeded Carausius. Peace having 
been restored everywhere, Diocletian sowed division among the barbarians. 
He armed them against one another, Goths and Vandals, Gepidae and 
Burgundians. Then he had all the frontier fortifications repaired and 
new posts erected; and in a few years the empire was again on a formidable 
footing. Ihese successes were celebrated with a pom.pous triumph, the 
last that Rome was to witness (303). 

Unfortunately Diocletian let himself be persuaded by Galerius to 
order a cruel persecution of the Church. A fire that broke out in the im- 
perial palace, which the Christians were accused of starting, increased his 
anger. The whole empire, except the provinces ruled by Constantius 
Chlorus, resounded with the groans of the tortured. Soon afterwards 
Diocletian, disgusted with power, abdicated at Nicomedia (May i, 305). 
Maximian, much against his v/ill, followed this example at Milan. The 
former head of the Roman world retired to a magnificent villa which he had 
had built for himself near Salona (Spalato), on the Dalmatian coast, and 
there spent his old age in works of peace. One day, when Maxim.ian urged 
him to reascend the throne, he answered: "If you could only see the fine 
vegetables I am myself growing, you would not mention such wearisome 
things." He died there in 313. The ruins of that palace are still to be 
seen there. 

New Emperors and Fresh Civil Wars. — Galerius and Constantius 
assumed the title of Augusti and took two new Caesars, namely, Miaximin, 
who received the government of Syria and Egypt, and Severus, who had 
Italy and Africa, and who became Augustus after the death of Constantius. 
The last named prince's son, Constantine, whom a brilliant renown was 
awaiting, succeeded his father, with the title of Caesar. Diocletian's 
combination, which seemed so cleverly conceived to prevent usurpations 
by designating certain ambitious men in advance and by making the 
supreme authority felt everywhere, was really impracticable. That empire, 
so vast and now so threatened, could be held together for a tim.e by an 
experienced and firm hand, as after Diocletian that of Constantine was 
to be, but dismem.berment was inevitable. It was Rome that gave the 
signal for fresh wars. Irritated at being abandoned by the new emperors, 
it saluted with the title of Augustus Maximian's son, Maxentius (306), 



Imperial Roman Absolutism and Christianity 175 

who took his father as colleague, so that the empire at one and the same 
time had six masters. Serverus was the first to fall, defeated and slain 
by Maximian. The latter then disappeared, dismissed by his son and 
put to death by his son-in-law, Constantine, whom he was trying to over- 
throw (310). In the following year Galerius died, carried off by his de- 
baucheries. In his turn Maxentius succumbed in battle against his brother- 
in-law, Constantine, near the Milvian bridge, on the Tiber above Rome 
(312). In this expedition Constantine had won the support of the Chris- 
tians by having the cross placed on his standards. Licinius, the successor 
of Galerius, had at the same time defeated Maximin, who poisoned himself 
(313). The empire had now but two masters, Licinius in the east and 
Constantine in the west. It was still one too many for those ambitious 
and perfidious princes, who sought to overthrow each other. Licinius 
fomented a conspiracy against his rival; and the latter responded by de- 
claring war upon him (314), defeating him, and making him agree to an 
onerous peace. This peace lasted nine years, and Constantine used the 
interval to bring order into the administration and glory and power to 
himself by a victory over the Goths. Then forty thousand of their warriors, 
under the name of Foederati, entered his service. Under the pretext of 
protecting the Christians, whom his colleague was persecuting, Constantine 
attacked him and, after two victories, made him prisoner. He stripped 
him of the purple, but promised to spare his life, yet a little later had him 
put to death (323). 

The Beginnings of Christianity.— Pagan morality had risen to 
high eminence with Seneca, Lucan, Perseus, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, 
and the active propagandism of the philosophers had had some effect on 
men's souls. But the splendor with which certain minds still shine in our 
eyes keeps us from seeing the state of spiritual childhood in which the 
greater part of mankind then lived. To the latter the most beautiful doc- 
trines found by reason remained ineffective because they were not supported 
by beliefs born of faith alone. The philosophers wrote in magnificent terms 
of their contempt of fortune, suffering and death; but they knew very little 
about the life to come, about the punishments and rewards awaiting us. 
Their proud virtue suited despairing sages, some of those great men of 
Rome who, having lost the dignity of citizen, had taken refuge in that of 
man. But the multitude needed those marvels that strike the intellect 
and impose certainty without their being understood; and those beliefs 
in which reason sees nothing a religion alone can give. Placed between 
Egypt and Persia, that is, between the two countries that professed the 
most energetic faith in a life to come, Judea had at last united with the 



176 Imperial Roman Absolutism and Christianity 

great Semitic idea of divine unity that of the resurrection and judgment of 
the dead for an eternity of torture or of happiness. The adorable purity 
of the parables of Jesus, that invincible faith in God and His justice, and 
that teaching v^hich shed itself in ardent charity for all forms of suffering 
and of wretchedness, went to the hearts of the lowly; and at the same time 
the Fathers and the Doctors, constructing from the Platonian ideas the 
most rational, and consequently the most philosophical, system of meta- 
physics the world had yet known, won over the better minds to the cause 
of the new Gospel. Jesus was born some time between the years 747 and 
750 of Rome (from seven to four years before our er^i), in the small town 
of Bethlehem, amid Jews who, overwhelmed with misfortunes, were await- 
ing the coming of the Messias promised by their prophets. In the fifteenth 
year of Tiberius He began to traverse Judea, teaching love of God and 
of man, purity and justice, reward for the good and chastisement for the 
wicked. The Pharisees, narrow minded adherents of the law of Moses, 
had the holy Victim of mankind condemned to death and nailed to a cross. 
After His Passion the Apostles dispersed through the provinces in which 
many Jewish colonies had settled. A large number of pagans, disgusted 
with their marble gods and with that empty heaven to which nothing 
called them, and many slaves and poor who at last heard a human voice 
murmuring in their ears words of consolation and hope, entered the fold of 
the nascent Church. In the time of Nero there were already enough 
Christians in Rome for them to be persecuted. Some suffered under 
Domitian; a larger number under Trajan, who, however, forbade them 
to be sought after, but, by applying old decrees of the Senate, punished 
those who were convicted of having formed secret assemblies or despised 
the imperial authority by refusing to sacrifice to the gods whose worship 
the emperor, as sovereign pontiff, was entrusted with protecting. 

Struggles and Triumph of the Church. — But the rising Church 
and its doctrines were becoming better known. The pagans set up against 
it the pretended miracles of Vespasian and of Apollonius of Tyana, a 
philosopher and wonder worker. They tried also to purify paganism 
so as to make it less unworthy to contend against the religion of Jesus 
Christ, and to their worship gave mysterious forms calculated to strike 
the imagination, and consequently to keep it under their influence, such 
as initiations, expiations, the taurobolium, etc., odd conceptions that 
did not succeed in keeping souls from rushing to a doctrine at one and the 
same time simpler and more pleasing. Christianity incurred another 
danger. Like philosophy, it had its different schools and heresies (choices); 
but the Epistles, the four Gospels, and the Apostles' Creed upheld unity, 



Imperial Roman Absolutism and Christianity 177 

and Aristides and Justin presented to Hadrian and Antonine two defences 
that won some repose for the faithful. The sophists, however, prevailed 
upon Marcus Aurelius to decree fresh prosecutions (martyrdoms of Justin, 
Polycarp, Plotinus, etc.). The Christians were scarcely in peace again 
when Severus, a strict disciplinarian, became alarmed at their secret as- 
semblies and ordered a persecution (199-204, Apologetics of Tertullian), 
to which the sympathetic tolerance of Alexander Severus put an » end. 
Under Decius revenge was taken out on them for the empire's misfortunes, 
attributed to the wrath of the gods, and the last persecution, that of Dio- 
cletian, or rather of Galerius, merited being called the age of the martyrs 
i3^3~3'^^)- It had been so cruel only because the Christians were then 
very numerous in the empire. Constantine put himself at the head of 
that important party, and this step brought him victory. 

It vv^as in his expedition against Maxentius (312) that he declared 
himself the defender of the new faith. In the following year he issued from 
Milan an edict of toleration. As long as Licinius lived, Constantine dealt 
gently with the pagans, but in 321 he granted to the Church the privilege 
of receiving donations and legacies, and he paid for the aid he received 
from it against his last rival by lavishing upon it, at the expense of the 
imperial patrimony, property the possession of which he guaranteed to it 
in perpetuity. To the Christian priests he transmitted all the privileges 
the pontiffs of paganism had enjoyed, that is, the right of asylum for the>ir 
temples, and for themselves exemption from public charges, tasks and 
taxes. The lowest cleric could not be compelled to give testimony in a 
civil court, and Sunday rest was ordered, a great boon to the slaves. So as 
to multiply conversions, he showed on what side imperial favors were 
now to be found, by giving all the places to the Christians and to the 
cities that overthrew the akars of the gods. On the other hand, he 
tried to ruin paganism first by exhortations frequently made to its adherents, 
and then, when triumphant Christianity removed the fear of a dangerous 
uprising, by severe ordinances which, in many places, closed the temples and 
overthrew the idols, without, however, shedding the blood of those remain- 
ing attached to the old religion. The Council of Nicaea, which Constantine 
had convened in 325, at last drew up the charter of Christianity. When it 
had adjourned, Constantine wrote to all the Churches requiring them "to 
conform to the will of God as expressed by the Council. " 

The Imperial Administration Reorganized — Revolution was an ac- 
complished fact in the religious order; and in the political order Constantine 
completed what Diocletian had begun. The latter had only sketched the 
organization intended to put an end to military revolutions. Constantine 
12 



178 Imperial Roman Absolutism and Christianity 

continued this work. First, he renounced Rome still devoted to its gods 
with which he had parted company, and founded another capital on the 
shores of the Bosphorus, between Europe and Asia. Constantinople rose 
on the site of Byzantium, far enough from the eastern frontiers to have 
nothing to fear from the enemy's attacks, and near enough to them to 
watch them better and defend them. So well chosen was the site that for 
ten centuries invasion passed by the foot of its walls before carrying it. 
The buildings were begun in 326; in 330 Constantine inaugurated the 
new city as the capital of the empire. There he set up a senate, tribes and 
curiae; there he raised a Capitol, consecrated not to the gods of Olympus, 
now dethroned and dead, but to science, and palaces, aqueducts, baths, 
porticos, a gold milliary, and eleven churches. The site covered seven 
hills, and he divided it, like Rome, into fourteen regions. There the 
people had gratuitous distributions; Egypt sent to it its grains, the pro- 
vinces their statues and most beautiful monuments. Rome, abandoned 
by its emperor, and by its richest families, who settled where the court 
resided, gradually became isolated in the midst of the empire; and, while 
fighting went on around it, it sat in the shadow of its name, awaiting its ruin. 
The empire was divided into four prefectures, and these into thirteen 
dioceses. The too large provinces inspired the governors with the thought 
of rising higher, even to empire. They were divided, and the twenty 
provinces of Augustus became the one hundred and sixteen of Constantine. 
A numerous body of administrators, distributed through a long and cleverly 
arranged hierarchy, was interposed between the people and the emperor, 
whose will, transmitted by the ministers to the praetorian prefects, passed 
from the latter to the presidents of the dioceses, and from them through 
the governors of provinces to the cities. At the head of this hierarchy 
were the seven high officials who formed the imperial cabinet. To these 
must be added the multitude cf secondary agents encumbering the palace 
and more numerous, says Libanius, than flies in summer. The four 
praetorian prefects for the Orient, Illyria, Italy and Gaul had now no mili- 
tary duties assigned to them; but they published the emperor's decrees, 
drew up the register of landed property, supervised the levying of taxes, 
passed upon appeals from the heads of the dioceses, etc. Their rich 
appointments and the numerous attendants of their offices made them as 
it were four kings of a secondary order in command over the governors 
of the dioceses and the provinces. The masters of cavalry and of infantry 
had under them the military counts of the provinces. 

Court Splendor and Its Support. — Diocletian had already assumed 
the pomp of the Asiatic courts so as to make the prince's majesty more 



Imperial Roman Absolutism and Christianity 179 

respected by making ii: invisible; and Constantine followed this example. 
The offices of the imperial court gave to those invested with them titles of 
non-transmissible personal nobility. The consuls, the prefects and the 
seven ministers were called illustres; the proconsuls, the vicars, the counts 
and the dukes were spectabiles; the consulars, the correctors and the presi- 
dents were clarissimi. There were also perfectissimi and egregii. The 
princes of the imperial house bore the title nobilissimi. This divine hier- 
archy, as the army of office-holders surrounding and concealing the em- 
peror's sacred person was called in the official language, increased the 
splendor of the court without adding to the government's strength. Emolu- 
ments were necessary for this immense retinue far more anxious to please 
the prince than to work for the public weal; the expenses of administration 
increased; more was demanded of taxation, while poverty was already 
exhausting the richest provinces. Then began between the treasury and 
the tax-payers a war of trickery and acts of violence that irritated the 
communities and extinguished even the last remnants of patriotism. 

The free institutions of the olden time still survived in municipal 
rule. Each city had its senate; the curia, made up of curiales or owners of 
at least twenty-five acres, who deliberated on the affairs of the munici- 
pality, and elected from among themselves magistrates to administer them; 
the duumvirs, who presided over the curia, managed the city's interests, 
and passed judgment on lawsuits of slight importance; an aedile, a curator 
or treasurer, a collector, irenarchs (police commissioners), scribes and 
tabellios ; and beginning with the emperor Valentinian I they had a defender, 
a sort of tribune elected by the city to defend it with the governor or the 
prince. But the curiales entrusted with levying the taxes guaranteed 
recovery with their property. Accordingly their condition was to become 
more and more wretched; they were to try to escape this condition by 
taking refuge in the privileged bodies — the clergy and the army; but they 
v/ould be brought back by compulsion into the curia in which at their death 
their sons would take their places. Exemption from torture and certain 
degrading penalties was but a poor compensation. Therefore the number 
of the curiales was already diminishing in all the cities. 

The Heavy Burden of Taxation. — These taxes, for which they were 
held responsible, were very heavy. First came the Indiction, a tax on 
real estate that was assessed according to the means attributed to each 
person in the register prepared every fifteen years (cycle of the indictions), 
then the twentieth of inheritances, the hundredth of the proceeds of auction 
sales, the capitation paid by non-proprietors and for slaves, etc., and lastly 
the customs dues and the chrysargyrum, levied every four years on minor 



i8o Imperial Roman Absolutism and Christianity 

trade and minor industry. The aurum coronartum, formerly voluntary 
when the cities sent gold crowns to the consuls or the emperors, on solemn 
occasions, had become an obligatory tax. These charges seemed so much 
the heavier to persons of small and moderate means as they weighed not 
at all or but lightly on the very rich. The nobilissimi, the patncii, the 
illustres, the spectabileSy the clarissimt, the perfectissimi, the egregii, all 
persons of the palace, all the court nobility, and the clergy were exempted 
from the heaviest imposts, which fell wholly on the curiales. The third 
class, that of mere free men, comprising those owning less than twenty-five 
acres, small dealers and artisans, was no less numerous. The guilds, 
which the city artisans had organized, especially since the time of Alexander 
Severus, had become bondages which the government forbade them to 
leave; it thought it would thus force the men to work, and it killed in- 
dustry. In the rural districts the petty proprietors, robbed by the violence 
and trickery of the powerful, of by the invasions of the barbarians, were 
reduced to becoming tenants of the wealthy, a condition which attached 
them to the land while depriving them, if not of the title, at least of most 
of the rights, of the free man. Amid all these forms of wretchedness a 
single class was the gainer, that of the slaves. Stoic philosophy first, and 
then Christianity, had modified ideas and laws in regard to them. They 
were at last considered as men; they were authorized to dispose more 
freely of their peculuniy and it was forbidden to kill them, to torture them, 
nay, even, when they were sold, to separate families. As the free men 
were degraded and the slaves elevated, a new condition began to be formed, 
the serfdom of the glebe, preferable to slavery. -But, while waiting for this 
benefit to become generalized, the free man, discouraged, ceased to work; 
the population diminished, and it was found necessary to repeople with 
barbarians provinces that had become deserted. Such conditions could 
not but bring on a revolution; and we will see similar conditions in France 
produce a far rhore tragic cataclysm. 

The Army and the Church. — The real army, that which was to meet 
invasion, was now made up of little else than barbarians, especially Germans, 
to whom was imprudently confided the guarding of the frontiers, the lim- 
itanei. The legions, reduced from six thousand to fifteen hundred men, so 
that they might no longer give to their generals those ambitious desires that 
had produced so many usurpers, went on garrison duty in the cities of the 
interior. The palatines, forming the emperor's special guard, were the 
best paid and most honored. In the army, there was the same regime as 
in the civil order, servitude and privilege, which eliminated from the trade 
of arms every man of any worth; the recruits were picked up from the dregs 



Imperial Roman Absolutism and Christianity i8i 

of society or from among the vagabonds of the barbarian nations that soon 
came to make the law. There was no more military honor — the soldiers 
were marked like galley slaves. Accordingly, in spite of its hundred and 
thirty-three legions, its arsenals, its magazines, and its magnificient line of 
fortifications along the Rhine, the Main, the Danube, the Euphrates and the 
Arabian desert, the empire was about to be invaded by contemptible en- 
emies. 

If, then, the new state of things raised what had formerly been humil- 
iated, the slave, the woman, the child, on the other hand, everything that 
had of old been strong and proud, the free man, the citizen, was lowered. 
As there was a lack of soldiers, so there also was a lack of writers and art- 
ists. Nothing great would come out of the schools which Valentinian was 
going to reorganize. There were only sophists and rhetoricians like 
Libanius, poets like Claudian, makers of versified trifles and epithalamia. 
Literature and art, still closely connected with paganism, were falling 
with that worship whose adherents were soon to be found only in the rural 
populations, pagani. Faith and life, which were withdrawing from the 
old religion and the old society, were passing to a new religion and a new 
society. Christianity had developed and organized amid persecutions, 
and it had ascended the throne with Constantine, who loaded the Church 
with privileges, immunitiea and wealth, adding this influence to that already 
given to it by its ardent young faith, its spirit of proselytism and the genius 
of its leaders. Even heresy had to a certain extent only strengthened it. 
From its bosom there came an elevated, impassioned and active literature 
(Tertullian and ere long Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory Nazian- 
zen, Lactantius, Salvian, etc.); fifteen great councils, held in the fourth 
century, bear witness to its activity, and already its dogma, its discipline 
and its hierarchy of clerics, bishops and metropolitans was organized. 
The empire and the old society would decay and die, but the Church would 
survive, opening its wide fold to the barbarians; sending to the Goths 
of Dacia an Arian bishop, Ulphilas, who would translate the Bible into 
their tongue, and others who would go and convert the Burgundians. 

Constantine and His Sons. — Constantine's entire reign is filled up 
with three great facts, namely, the establishment of Christianity as the 
dominant religion in the empire, the founding of Constantinople, and the 
reorganizing of the administration. From the fall of Licinius (323) until 
his death (337) we find in history only the bloody tragedies of the imperial 
palace, in which were put to death by his orders his son Crispus, the empress 
Fausta, and Licinius's young son, a child of twelve. Embassies of Blem- 
myes, Ethiopians and Indians, a treaty with Sapor II, who promised to 



1 82 Imperial Roman Absolutism and Christianity 

treat the Christians in Persia gently, and two fortunate expeditions against 
the Goths and. the Sarmations (332), made men forget these domestic 
dark deeds. A few days before expiring, Constantine had himself baptized 
by an Arian bishop, Eusebius of Nicomedia. 

He made the great mistake of dividing the empire between his three 
sons and certain of his nephews without deciding on a final dismemberment. 
Thus were unchained new wars and fresh crimes. First, the soldiers 
massacred his nephews, except Gallus and Julian. The eldest of his sons, 
Constantine II, perished in a battle against one of his brothers (340), who 
was himself slain in 350 by Magnentius, who was of Prankish origin. There 
remained the third, Constantius, who, having to check the Persians in the 
Orient and to fight in the west against a usurper, appointed as Caesar his 
cousin Gallus and confided to him the continuing of the war against Sapor. 
Magnentius, beaten in Pannonia (351), was driven to committing suicide, 
and Gaul, Spain and Britain submitted. All the provinces were, then, 
once more united under a single master; but they were no better governed. 
The palace was disturbed by the intrigues of women, eunuchs and courtiers, 
the empire by religious quarrels fomented by Arianism, which, though 
condemned at Nicaea, had gained in strength, and by the continual in- 
cursions of the barbarians. On false reports Constantius believed that 
the Caesar of Othe rient was preparing a revolt. The young prince, re- 
called from Asia by flattering promises, was brought to Pola in Istria and 
beheaded. His brother Julian was spared and banished to Athens, where 
he could devote himself freely to his taste for study and become initiated 
in the Platonian doctrines. But the imperial authority needed to be as it 
were present on every frontier that was threatened. After fourteen months 
it was found necessary to recall Julian and entrust to him, as Caesar, the 
defence of Gaul invaded by the Franks and Alamans. He defeated them 
in the battle of Strasburg (357), drove the barbarians from all the country 
between Basel and Cologne, crossed the Rhine and brought back with 
him a large number of Gauls and legionaries who had been captured and 
held as prisoners. By an able administration he made himself popular 
with the citizens, as he was with the soldiers by reason of his victories. 
Constantius became uneasy, and wished to deprive him of his troops, who 
mutinied and proclaimed him Augustus. This was a declaration of war. 
A rapid and bold march had already brought Julian to the middle of Illyria 
when Constantius died (Oct. 3, 361). 

Julian, Called the Apostate. — Victorious without fighting, Julian 
abjured Christianity, to which he had belonged only in outward semblance; 
but yet, on account of this change in appearance only, he came to be known 



Imperial Roman Absolutism and Christianity 183 

as the Apostate. He publicly professed the old religion and reopened the 
temples, hoping to bring back the multitude to them. Thus strangely did 
he misunderstand the society he was called upon to rule; and he tried in 
vain to restore life to what death had so naturally stricken down; yet if he 
had lived longer, he would no doubt have cruelly expiated that unintelligent 
turning back towards the past. At least he did not undertake to make 
that reaction triumph with the aid of violence; he promulgated an edict 
of toleration permitting the sacrifices prohibited by Constantius, and re- 
called the exiles of all religious parties; but he must be reproached with 
a perfidious ordinance, that forbidding the Christians to teach literature. 
Austere to himself, he affected the simplicity of a strict Stoic; but he 
was sometimes severe also on others, as is shown by the court he estab- 
lished, after his accession, to pass judgment on prevaricating office-holders, 
and which was accused of having rendered unjust sentences. Yet on one 
occasion, when severity might be allowable, he showed a patience that did 
him honor. Anxious for the glory of avenging on the Persians the many 
injuries they had inflicted on the empire, he had reached Syria with an army. 
At Antioch the inhabitants, all zealous Christians, mocked him openly on 
account of his unkempt beard and sordid garments — they went even so far 
as to insult him. The emperor could punish; but the philosopher remained 
satisfied with answering in a satire on their effeminate morals (the "Mis- 
opogon"). It was then he made his futile attempt to rebuild the Temple of 
Jerusalem so as to defy prophecy, which he succeeded only in verifying. He 
had removed the last stone of its foundations when an earthquake scattered 
his workmen. After this, at the head of sixty thousand men, he penetrated 
as far as Ctesiphon, where he crossed the Tigris and burned his fleet, so 
as to leave no hope but that of victory to his soldiers. But, treacherously 
led astray and falling short of provisions, he had to turn back on Gordyene, 
the way to which was opened to him by a victory. In a second fight he 
fell mortally wounded, and died while conversing with his friends on the 
immortality promised to the just man's soul. He was only thirty-two years 
old and had been less than twenty-one months on the throne (363). 

Jovian, Valentinian and Valens. — The army proclaimed Jovian, 
who, by a humiliating treaty, abandoned to Sapor the supremacy over 
Armenia and the five provinces beyond the Tigris, with several fortified 

f)laces that had served as bulwarks of the empire. He died eight months 
ater (February, 364). The generals agreed to proclaim Valentinian, who 
gave the Orient to his brother Valens and made his own headquarters at 
Paris, so as the better to watch the Germans. He sowed dissension among 
the barbarians, set the Burgundians against the Alamans, and, victoriouf; 



1 84 Imperial Roman Absolutism and Christianity 

over some of these restless tribes, he rebuilt the fortifications guarding the 
crossings of the Rhine. In his internal government he was severe to cruelty, 
having rarely more than one punishment for all delinquencies, death. 
But in religious matters he was tolerant towards all. Unfortunately for 
the empire, this valiant general died on an expedition against the Quadi 
(375)- His son, Gratian, who succeeded him, abandoned to his younger 
brother, Valentinian II, the prefectures of Illyria and Italy. In the East 
Valens, less wise, mingled in the religious quarrels instead of reorganizing 
the army. Yet a great danger was threatening him. Hunnic tribes 
belonging to the Mongol races of eastern Asia had crossed the Ural, sub- 
jugated the Alans, and driven to the Danube the Goths, who made sup- 
pliant appeals to the emperor (375). Valens, flattered in his pride, forgot 
prudence, and welcomed that multitude in which there were still two 
hundred thousand combatants. They revolted, and Valens met, near 
Adrianople, a defeat more disastrous than that of Cann^ (S?^). Scarcely 
a third of the Roman army escaped. The emperor, wounded, perished 
in a cabin to which the barbarians had set fire, and all the level country 
was given over to most frightful desolation. Saracen troops called from 
Asia saved Constantinople. These sons of the southern deserts found 
themselves for the first time in conflict with the men of the north whom 
they were to meet three and a half centuries later at the other extremity 
of the Mediterranean. 

Theodosius the Great.--At that very time Gratian defeated the 
Alanians near Colmar. But in the east the empire had no head; and to 
fill his uncle's place it chose an able general, Theodosius, who reorganized 
the army and restored courage to the soldiers by furnishing them with the 
opportunity of engaging in many minor combats in which he was careful to 
assure the advantage to them. He let no strong place fall into the enemy's 
hands, and he dininished their numbers by urging desertions, so that, 
without having won a great victory, he brought the Goths to terms (382). 
In reality Theodosius gave them what they wanted; he planted them in 
Thrace and Mxsia on condition that they would defend the passage of 
the Danube; and forty thousand of their warriors were enlisted as imperial 
troops, which meant that the empire v/ould be theirs at no distant day. In 
Gaul Gratian had been overthrown by the usurper Maximus (383), who. 
taking advantage of the troubles which Arianism had stirred up in Italy, 
crossed the Alps and compelled Valentinian II to take refuge with Theo- 
dosius. This prince brought him back to Italy after a victory over Max- 
imus, v/hom his own soldiers put to death in Aquilaea, and gave to him 
as prime minister the Frank, Arbogast, who had just delivered Gaul from 




Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria. 



Mutsuhito, Emperoi- of Japan. 





King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy. Emperor William II of Germany 

RULERS OF GREAT POWERS. 




John Bright. 



William Bwart Gladstone. 




Joseph ChamberlRin. Lord Beaconsfleld. 

GREAT STATESMEN OF MODERN ENGLAND. 



Imperial Roman Absolutism and Christianity 185 

the Germans, but who filled all the civil and military offices with bar- 
barians. After the departure of Theodosius, Valentinian wished to shake 
off this tutelage and to deprive the count of his functions; a few days 
later he was found dead in bed (392). 

Arbogast cast the purple on the shoulders of a secretary of the palace, 
the rhetorician Eugenius, and tried to rally to his cause what remained of 
the pagans. This imprudent conduct raised up the Christian population 
against him; and a single battle, near Aquil^ea, brought this ephemeral 
domination to an end. Eugenius was captured and put to death, and 
Arbogast committed suicide (394). This time the victor kept his conquest; 
and the victory was that also of orthodo?:y. Under severe penalties Theo- 
dosius prohibited the worship of the gods, which, driven from the cities, 
took refuge in the rural districts (paganism), and, besides the right of 
reaching honors, he deprived the heretics of that of disposing of their 
property by will. On the other hand, he took wise steps towards trying 
to heal some of the ills that were afflicting that dying society, and he honored 
the last days of the empire by displaying on the throne virtues which the 
peoples had rarely been called upon to respect there. During a sedition 
the inhabitants of Thessalonica had slain the governor and several imperial 
officers. Theodosius issued orders Vv^hich cost the lives of seven thousand 
persons. This massacre aroused a feeling of horror throughout the whole 
empire. When, some time afterwards, he presented himself at the door 
of the Milan cathedral, St. Ambrose reproached him with his crime in 
in the presence of the whole people, and forbade him to enter the church. 
The emperor accepted the public penance which the holy bishop imposed 
on him in the name of an outraged God and humanity — for eight months 
he did not cross the threshold of the temple. At his death he divided the 
empire between his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius (395), a final division 
that answered to the reality of things, for the Adriatic separated two lan- 
guages, and almost two religions — Constantinople Greek and so often 
Arian, and Rome Latin and orthodox, had each wished for an emperor 
of its own; and this separation still lasts in the different religions and 
civilizations of these two halves of the ancient world, the one standing 
still, the other progressive. 

End of the Empire in the West— the Change.— The barbarians, 
who had remained on the defensive for four centuries, were now about 
to attack the Roman posts unrelaxingly. Owing to its situation, Constan- 
tinople could resist invasion for ten centuries more, but Rome, on the con- 
trary, was captured almost immediately, and the western part of the empire 
struggled for eighty years in a painful agony whose chief traits we find in 



i86 Imperial Roman Absolutism and Christianity 

the history of Alaric, Attila, and Gaiseric, to be told In the next chapter. 
Honorius died in 423, and his nephew, Valentinian III, reigned wretchedly 
until 455, when he perished by assassination. Majorian, worthy of a 
better time, was slain by the Suevian Ricimer, who gave his place to three 
senators in succession. At last a leader of the Heruli, Odovacar, put an 
end to the empire in the west (476), by deposing Romulus Augustulus, 
a mere boy in whose name were combined the names of the legendary 
founder of Rome and the great founder of the empire. Proclaimed king 
of Italy by the barbarians, Odovacar gave to them one-third of the lands 
of the peninsula, and asked of Constantinople the title of patrician, thus 
recognizing the rights of the eastern emperor as suzerain of the new king- 
dom. 

The Roman empire fell because from the beginning it had detestable 
political institutions and, in later times, a deplorable military organization. 
Ever more burdensome taxes and a pitiless fiscal system caused disaffec- 
tion in subjects whom the armies no longer defended, and a new religion 
that tended to detach men's minds from earth ruined what little devoted- 
ness to the public weal was left. Accordingly the empire ^vas not precipi- 
tated by a violent and unforeseen catastrophe; it sank of itself as having 
become incapable of living any longer. The Roman people added very 
little to the inheritance bequeathed to it by Greece; yet it also left great 
things and great lessons behind it, but in a different order of facts and 
ideas. Its language has been and ever is, if need be, the bond of the learned 
world; its law has, though too often in the direction of tyranny, inspired 
modern legislations; its military roads, its bridges, and its aqueducts have 
made men understand the necessity of public works; its administration has 
taught how to guide multitudes of men; its government has served as a 
model for the absolute monarchies that succeeded feudalism; its municipal 
institutions can still furnish us with useful examples; and, in the last place, 
it began the transformation of ancient slavery into glebe serfdom. 

The barbarian kings, dazzled by the splendor shed by that dying 
empire, at first thought only of continuing it. Clovis would be a patrician 
of Rome. Theodoric would regard himself as the colleague of the Eastern 
emperor, and Charlemagne, Otho and Frederick Barbarossa would call 
themselves successors of Constantine. The Christianity of Jerusalem, 
having become Catholicism at Rome, would be the most powerful govern- 
ment of souls, and the spiritual monarchy of the Popes would copy what 
was good of the temporal monarchy of the emperors whom it would super- 
sede. 



CHAPTER XII 



The Western Empire Divided 



The Middle Ages Defined.— By the Middle Ages are meant the times 
that elapsed between the destruction of the Roman empire in the west 
and the establishment of the great modern monarchies, from the invasions 
of the Germans in the early part of the fifth century of our era to the com- 
pletion of that of the Turks ten centuries later, in 1453. ^" ^^is epoch, 
placed between ancient and modern times, cultivation of literature and the 
arts was as it were suspended, though there was then created a new and 
magnificent style of architecture. Instead of the republics of antiquity 
and the monarchies of our age, a special organization was established which 
has been called feudalism. This was the domination of the barons or 
great lords which it took several centuries to develop and which perished 
at the hands of Louis XI, the Tudors, and the princes contemporary with 
them. Though there were kings in each country, yet the military and 
ecclesiastical heads really ruled from the ninth to the twelfth century. The 
central power was weak, the local powers without an overseer and a guide, 
and the frontiers vaguely marked. Sovereignty united with ownership 
parceled out the land into a multitude of States which did not allow them- 
selves to produce the feeling of nationality. Yet over this immense poly- 
archy soared the idea of Christian unity, represented by the Pope, and 
that of a certain political unity represented by the emperor, who called 
all the monarchs of Europe provincial kings. Accordingly, the great wars 
of that time were religious wars — the Crusades against the Mussulmans 
of Palestine, the Moors of Spain, the Albigensian heretics of Languedoc, 
the pagans of the Baltic, or the struggle between the two powers aspiring 
to govern the world, the quarrel between the priesthood and the Empire. 
There were radical differences, then, between this epoch and those pre- 
ceding and following it; whence the necessity of giving it a name and a 
place of its own in universal history, and of showing how, by supplanting 
the orientalized despotism of Rome, it has bequeathed liberty to the modern 

world. 

187 



1 88 The Western Empire Divided 

Manners and Religion of the Northern Barbarians — During the 
military anarchy that exhausted the last resources of the Roman empire 
there were in motion beyond its frontiers, and constantly encroaching on 
them more and more, populations hitherto hidden in the depths of the 
north, south and east. In the north, three collections of peoples arranged 
in the following order: Germans or Teutons, probably a branch of the 
Thracian-Illyrian race and the second Aryan horde to reach Europe, the 
Celtic being the first; then the Slavs, pressing them closely, and lastly 
Turanian tribes; in the east the Persians, a settled and fixed people that 
had often made war on the empire, but never dreamt of invading it; to 
the south, in the deserts of their great peninsula, the Arabs or Saracens, 
who w^ere not yet dreaded, and in Africa the Moorish populations, who had 
merely come in contact with, but had not been affected by, Roman civili- 
zation. When Theodosius died (395), serious danger was threatened 
only from the north. Driven by the Asiatic hordes from the banks of the 
Volga, the Germans were pressing on the empire's frontiers — Suevi or 
Suabians, Alamans and Bavarians in the south, between the Main and the 
lake of Constance; Marcomans, Quadi, Hermunduri, HeruH and the great 
nation of the Goths, on the left bank of the Danube; to the west, along the 
Rhine, the confederation of the Franks formed in the middle of the third 
century, and, from Lake Flevo to the mouth of the Ems, the Frisians, a 
remnant of the Batavians; to the north. Vandals, Burgundians, Rugians, 
Longobardi or Lombards; between the Elbe and the Eider, the Angles 
and the Saxons; still farther north, the Scandinavians, Jutes and Danes, 
in Sweden and Denmark, whence they set out to make the second invasion; 
and, lastly, in the vast plains of the east and on miany points of the Danube 
valley, the Slavs, who were to follow the Germanic invasion, but would 
come into history only later on, at first through the Poles and then the 
Russians. 

These barbarians were animated by a spirit far different from that 
of the inhabitants of the Roman empire. Among them reigned love of 
individual independence, the warrior's devotedness to his leader, and 
the taste for wars of adventure. As soon as the young man had, in the 
public assembly, received the shield and the framea or javelin, he was a 
warrior and a citizen; he at once attached himself to some famous chief 
whom he followed to war with other braves, his leuds or henchmen, ever 
ready to die in defence of his life. The government of the Germans was 
simple— the affairs of the tribe were attended to in an assem^bly (mall) 
in which all took part. The warriors met there in arms; clashing of 
shields meant applause, a violent murmur disapproval. The same as- 
sembly wielded judiciary power. Each canton had its magistrate or 



« 



The Western Empire Divided 189 

graf, and the whole nation a king (konig), elected from among the mem- 
bers of one and the same family, which held hereditary possession of this 
title. For combat the warriors chose him whom they wished to follov, 
(herzog). The Olympus of these tribes presented a mingling of terrible 
and pleasing conceptions. Side by side with Odin, who gave victory and 
who rode at night through the air along with the dead warriors; withDonar 
(thunder), the Hercules of the Germans, and with the ferocious enjoyments 
of Walhalla, there appeared the goddesses Freia and Holda, the Venus 
and Diana of the north, who bore peace and the arts everywhere. The 
Germans also adored Herta (the earth), Sunna, and his brother Mani 
(the moon), whom two wolves pursued. The bards were their poets, who 
encouraged them to brave death. Therefore they gloried in dying while 
laughing. The Germans did little farming of the soil. They owned no 
exclusive domain, and every year the magistrates distributed to each 
hamlet and family the tract it was to cultivate. They had no cities, but only 
isolated mud cabins, remote from one another, and each surrounded by 
the field which the occupant tilled. Morals were rather pure — polygamy 
was permitted only to kings and nobles. But drunkenness and bloody 
quarrels usually ended their Homeric festivities, and they were inveterate 
gamblers. 



The Coming of the Huns to Europe. — Behind this Germanic 
family, which was about to occupy the greater part of the empire, two 
other barbarian nations were pressing, namely, the Slavs, whose part 
comes later on, and the Huns, who, by their wandering life, spent in enor- 
mous chariots or in their horses' saddles, by their bony features pierced 
with small eyes, their flat, broad nose, their enormous protruding ears, 
and their brown tattooed skin, were a cause of horror and terror to the 
westerners. It was they who, towards the end of the fourth century, 
set all that barbarian world in motion and precipitated the Germans on 
the western empire. In consequence of intestine disorders, a portion of 
the Hunnic nation, driven towards Europe, crossed the Volga, and, drag- 
ging along the Alans in its course, hurled itself against the great Gothic 
empire, in which Hermanric had united the three branches of his nation 
the Ostrogoths east of the Dnieper, the Visigoths, and the Gepidae or 
stragglers farther north. The eastern Goths submitted, but the west- 
ern banch or Visigoths fled towards the Danube and from the emperor 
Valens obtained a settlement on the lands of the empire. Having soon 
afterwards revolted against their benefactor, by whose agents they were 



lOO 



The Western Empire Divided 



being cheated, they slew him in the battle of Adrianople (378). But 
Theodosius hahed them, and settled in Thrace a large number of them, 
who at first faithfully defended that frontier against the Huns. 

The Visigothic Invasions — Alaric. — But when Theodosius died and 
his heritage was divided between his two sons, Honorius had the west, and 
it was upon his provinces that the whole shock of the northern invasion fell. 
Within half a century that empire received four terrible assaults — from 
Alaric, Radagaisus, Gaiseric and Attila; and scarcely had it fallen when the 
Francs under Clovis (Chlodvig) robbed the first invaders of its most beauti- 
ful portion, which they were to keep for good. The Visigoths, led by their 
king, Alaric, tried their strength first against the eastern empire. They 
ravaged Thrace and Macedonia, passed Thermopylae, where there was now 
no Leonidas, devastated Attica, where they respected Athens, and penetrated 
into the Peloponnesus. The Vandal Stilicho, Honorius's general, shut them 
up on Mount Pholoe; but they escaped, and Arcadius, who was reigning 
at Constantinople, got rid of their dangerous presence only by pointing out to 
them the empire of the west. They rushed to it, and met at Pollentia in 
Liguria (403) the same Stilicho, who defeated them and made them leave 
Italy. In celebration of this victory of his lieutenant, Honorius went in 
triumph to Rome and gave to the people the last bloody games of the circus; 
for Honorius prohibited their repetition in consequence of the sacrifice of 
protest which the eastern cenobite Almachus or Telemachus made of him- 
self on that occasion. Then the emperor hid himself at Ravenna, behind 
the marshes of the Po estuary, disdaining his old capital, and no longer 
daring to reside at Milan, where Alaric had come near capturing him. 

An at least apparent consent of the empire had admitted to its terri- 
tory the Visigoths, who so ill rewarded it for this. But now four peoples, 
Suevi, Alans, Vandals and Burgundians, violently broke its frontier at two 
points. One of their divisions crossed the Alps, under Radagaisus, and 
was annihilated at Fiesoli by Stilicho; another crossed the Rhine on the 
last day of the year 406, and for two years desolated the whole of Gaul. 
After this the Burgundians poured in (409), and on the banks of the Rhone 
founded a kingdom to which Honorius gave recognition four years later, 
and the Alans, the Suevi and the Vandals inundated Spain. The great 
invasion had begun. 

Alaric in Rome — the Visigothic, Suevian and Vandal Kingdoms- 

Alaric, however, returned to the charge, and no longer found Stilicho con- 
fronting him, for that great general had been sacrificed to the emperor's 
jealousy. He captured Rome, which he abandoned to the uncontrolled 



The Western Empire Divided 191 

rapacity of his barbarians, who, however, respected the Christian temples. 
He died soon afterwards at Cosenza in Calabria (410). The Visigoths dug 
his grave in the bed of a river whose stream they had temporarily diverted 
and then restored to its natural channel, after having murdered the prisoners 
who had done the work. But the power of the Visigoths did not perish 
with Alaric. In spite of the pillage of Rome, that people so long in contact 
with the empire was specially disposed to accept the ascendancy of Roman 
civilization, as it had already, like the Ostrogoths, accepted Arian Chris- 
tianity. Ataulf, Alaric's brother-in-law, and after him WaUia, put them- 
selves at the disposal of Honorius, and went in his service to deliver Gaul 
from the three usurpers who had assumed the purple there, and Spain from 
the three barbarian peoples that had invaded it. In reward Wallia ob- 
tained Aquitania Secunda, where he founded (419) the kingdom of the 
Visigoths, which was soon extended across the Pyrenees. In the same 
year Hermanric, out of the remnants of the Suevi, organized a kingdom 
in the mountains of the Asturias. A little later the Vandals, driven into 
southern Spain (Vandalitia, Andalusia), passed over into Africa, which 
was opened to them by the treason of Count Boniface, captured Hippo in 
spite of a long resistance encouraged by the exhortations of St. Augustine, 
bishop of that city (the modern Bona), and in 435 obliged the emperor 
Valentinian III to acknowledge the independence of their kingdom. 
Gaiseric, who effected this conquest, also seized Carthage (439), founded a 
maritime power on those coasts which had formerly known that of the 
Carthaginians, and until his death (477) sent his vessels to ravage all the 
Mediterranean seaports. In 453 he invaded Italy and captured Rome, 
which he delivered over for two weeks to most frightful pillage. 

The Hunnic Invasion under Attila. — Four barbarian kingdoms, 
then, had already arisen in the empire of the west when Attila appeared. 
This is the great episode of invasion in the fifth century. What would 
Europe become under a Tartar domination, under that Attila who called 
himself the Scourge of God, who wished that no grass should grow where 
his horse had trod ? Having put his brother Bleda to death, he ruled alone 
over the nation of the Huns and held under his yoke all the peoples settled 
on the banks of the Danube. He dwelt in a city and a palace of wood, in 
the plains of Pannonia, whence he had dictated laws to and imposed tributes 
upon Theodosius II, emperor of the east (treaty of Margus). Gaiseric 
having called upon him to make a diversion useful to his plans, he dragged 
down upon the west the immense mob of his peoples. He traversed 
northeastern Gaul, overturning everything, and laid siege to Orleans. 
The p3trician Aetius hurried to meet him with an army in which Visigoths, 



192 The Western Empire Divided 

Burgundians, Franks and Saxons fought side by side with the Romans 
against the new invaders, and the great battle near Chalons-sur-Marne 
(Catalaunian Fields, 451) drove Attila back beyond the Rhine. He then 
turned on Italy, and destroyed many cities there, among them Aquilaea, 
whose inhabitants took refuge in the lagoons of the Adriatic and there 
laid the foundations of Venice. He was on his way to lay siege to Rome 
when he was turned back by an embassy headed by Pope Leo I the Great, 
and retraced his steps to Pannonia. There he died of a hemorrhage (453), 
and the great power of the Huns melted away in the discords of his sons. 
The emperors of the west were now but playthings in the hands of the 
barbarian generals who commanded their troops. One of these, the 
Herulian Odovacar, ended this agony by assuming the title of king of Italy 
(476). So fell the great name of Empire of the West, an event more im- 
portant to the eyes of posterity than to those of contemporaries accustomed 
for over half a century to seeing barbarians as masters dispose of all things. 
There remained a remnant of it, however, in the heart of Gaul, between the 
Loire and the Somme, under the rule of the patrician Syagrius; but ten 
years later he fell a victim to the sword of the Franks. 

Barbarian Kingdoms of Gaul, Spain, Africa and Britain. — We 

have seen Alaric and his successors founding the kingdom of the Visigoths 
in Gaul and Spain, from the Loire to the strait of Gibraltar; Gaiseric 
erecting that of the Vandals in Africa; and lastly Attila ravaging everything, 
but building up nothing. Other barbarian dominations were established, 
such as those of the Burgundians, the Suevi, the Anglo-Saxons, the Ostro- 
goths and the Lombards, which soon passed away. Farther on we will 
speak of that of the Franks, which was destined to last. 

The Burgundian kingdom, erected in 413 in the valley of the Saone 
and the Rhone, with Geneva and Vienne as its chief cities, had eight kings, 
who have remained obscure. Clovis made it tributary in 500, and his sons 
conquered it in 534. The kingdom of the Suevi, originating at the same 
time, fell a few years later. In 409 that tribe had invaded Spain and seized 
the northwestern region or Galicia. Under its kings Rechila (441) and 
Rechair (448) it came near conquering the whole of Spain. The Goths 
arrested its progress, and subdued it in 585. Separated from the continent 
by the sea, Britain had an invasion of its own. Under Roman rule it had 
retained three distinct populations — in the north, or modern Scotland, the 
Caledonians or Picts and later the Scots from Ireland, whom the emperors 
had not been able to subdue; in the east and south the Logrians, who had 
yielded to the influence of Roman civilization; and in the west, beyond the 
Severn, the Cambrians or Welsh, a people that seemed invincible in its moun- 



The Western Empire Divided 193 

tain fastnesses. Abandoned by the legions in 408, and left without defence 
against the incursions of the Picts, the Logrians called to their aid (455) the 
Jutes, the Saxons and the Angles, who were constantly going out from the 
shores of Germany and the Cimbric peninsula to skim the seas. Two 
Saxon chiefs, to whom legend has given the names Hengist and Horsa 
(horse and mare) defeated the Picts and received as reward the island of 
Thanet on the Kentish coast. But Hengist, robbing those who had called 
him in, took possession of the country from the Thames to the Channel, and 
assumed the title of king of Kent (455). From that time it became all 
those pirates' ambition to gain a foothold in Britain. In 491 was founded 
the kingdom of Sussex (South Saxons), in 516 that of Wessex (West Saxons), 
and in 526 that of Essex (East Saxons). In 547 began the invasion of the 
Angles, who founded the kingdoms of Northumberland (North of the 
Humber), East Anglia (both on the eastern coast, the latter in 577), and 
Mercia (in the centre, 584). Then, these three Angle kingdoms being 
added to the four Saxon realms, there were in Britain seven small mon- 
archies, the Heptarchy, and eight when Northumbria was divided into 
Deira and Bernicia. Later on they came to form but one. Though 
England owes its name to the Angles, yet its language and the majority 
of its population are of Saxon origin. 

The Ostrogoths in Italy — Theodoric. — The conquest of Italy by the 
Ostrogoths took place later and was almost contemporary with that of 
Gaul by the Franks. This people, freed from the Hunnic yoke after 
Attila's death, took as its king in 475 Theodoric, son of one of its princes, 
who had been reared as a hostage at Constantinople. At the invitation of 
Zeno, emperor of the east, Theodoric conquered Italy from the Heruli 
(489-493), and proved himself the most truly great of the barbarian sov- 
ereigns before Charlemagne. To his kingdom of Italy he by clever nego- 
tiations added lUyria, Pannonia, Noricum and Rhaetia, the province 
of Marseilles, by a war against the Burgundians; and he defeated a Frank- 
ish army near Aries in 507. The Bavarians paid tribute to him; the 
Alamans called him in against Clovis; and, in the last place, upon the 
death of Alaric II, he became guardian of his grandson, Amalaric, and 
really ruled over the two great branches of the Gothic nation, whose posses- 
sions met near the Rhone and held the whole Mediterranean coast in 
Spain, Gaul and Italy. Family alliances united him with nearly all ttt^ 
barbarian kings. He made the best use of peace. For the new coftS^rs? 
lands were necessary, and each city gave up a third of its territorjf''^© be 
distributed to the Goths. Once this allotment was accomplished, R-^Sihrimckt: 
law was established for both peoples, except as to a few specif Hfs-licWt^ 

13 



194 The Western Empire Divided 

which the Goths retained. But in other respects he strove to separate 
the victors from the vanquished, reserving arms to the barbarians, and to 
the Romans, civil dignities. He professed great veneration for the old 
imperial institutions; he consulted the Roman Senate; he retained the 
municipal regime, himself appointing the decurions, and a barbarian re- 
stored to Italy a prosperity vv^hich it had lost under its emperors. The 
public buildings, aqueducts, theatres and baths were repaired; palaces and 
churches were built, and the uncultivated lands were cleared. Companies 
were formed to drain the Pontine marshes and those of Spoleto. The 
population increased considerably. Theodoric, who did not know how 
to write, gathered around him the best literary talent of that time, Cassio- 
dorus, Beothius, the bishop Ennodius, etc. Though an Arian, he treated 
the Catholics well, and confirmed the immunities of the churches. But 
the end of his reign was saddened by threats of persecutions in reprisal for 
those which the emperor of the east was making the Arians endure, and by 
the imprisonment and death of Boethius and the prefect Symmachus, 
unjustly accused of participation in a conspiracy. He died in 526, and his 
nation survived him only a few years. Thus passed rapidly the Vandals 
and the Heruli, the Suevi and the Burgundians, the western Goths and 
those of the east. They all formed parts of the first wave of barbarians that 
had entered the empire, and it seems that that Roman society, incapable of 
defending itself, was strong enough to communicate to those touching it the 
death it had in its heart. 

Justinian and the Revival of the Eastern Empire. — The ruins of 
the western empire had been covered with thirteen Germanic kingdoms — 
Burgundians, Visigoths, Suevi, Vandals, Franks, Ostrogoths, and the 
seven Anglo-Saxon States. The Greek empire alone had escaped invasion, 
and remained standing, in spite of its -precocious degradation, its religious 
discords, and the weakness of its government, most of the time in the hands 
of women or of eunuchs. The reign of Theodosius H, the longest it knew 
in the fifth century, (408-450), was rather that of Pulcheria, that incapable 
emperor's sister. It is noted for the publication of the Theodosian Code. 
Under Zeno and Anastasius, there were quarrels and riots in Constantinople 
regarding religion. Justinian (527-565), of Slavic origin, restored some 
vigor and splendor to that empire. He kept the eastern frontier intact 
and obliged the Persians to conclude (562), after thirty-four years of war, 
a treaty honorable to the empire. In 559 he drove back an invasion of 
Bulgarians who were threatening Constantinople, and in the west destroyed 
the kingdom of the Vandals by Belisarius's victory at Tricameron (534), 
and that of the Ostrogoths by the success of the eunuch Narses at Tagina 



The Western Empire Divided 195 

(552). At the same time as his generals were winning battles, his legates 
were drawing up the Code, the Digest or Pandects, the Institutes, and the 
Novellas or Authentics, which have handed down to posterity the substance 
of ancient jurisprudence. This reign was a glorious protest of the Roman 
empire of the East and of civilization against the invasion of barbarism. 
But it was ephemeral. In 568 Italy was lost. Conquered by the Lombards, 
that people founded there a fourteenth Germanic kingdom which lasted for 
over two centuries, until, in fact, it fell under the blows of Charlemagne. 
From that time it was decided that Constantinople would not inherit Rome, 
and that the remnants of the western empire, minus Africa and Spain, which 
had fallen to the Arabs, would belong to the Germanic race, all of whose 
tribes except those of Britain would come under the domination of the 
Franks. 

As regards the empire of the east, after that ephemeral splendor, it 
liad but gloomy days, in spite of the talents of a few princes like Maurice 
and Heraclius. Owing to its geographical situation, Constantinople, the 
decrepit daughter of the old Rome, which from its birth bore its mother's 
wrinkles on its brow, alone remained standing, like an island rock, and for 
ten centuries braved the assault of the waves, but living only a wretched 
life. Hemmed in between the two invasions of the Mussulmans from the 
south and the Slavic and Turanian tribes from the north, the Greeks of the 
Lower Empire, unworthy heirs of the fortune of Rome and of Greece, fell 
into darknesses of corruption, madness and bloody baseness, like a great 
river emptying into a fetid muddy marsh. 

Beginnings of the Franks.— In the third century B.C. the Germans 
had formed two confederations on the right of the bank of the Rhine 
in the south that of the Suevian tribes, who called themselves Alamans 
(the men), in the north that of the Salians, Sicambri, Bructeri, Cherusci, 
Catti, etc., who took the name of Franks (the brave). The first mention 
of the latter we find in the Roman writers is assigned to the year 241 A. D. 
Aurelian, then legionary tribune, defeated a body of Franks on the lower 
Rhine. Probus recovered from them the Gallic cities they had seized after 
the death of Aurelian and transplanted a colony of them on the Black Sea 
(277); but, a little later, others crossed the Rhine, devastated Belgium, and 
received from Julian permission to settle on the banks of the Meuse, a 
region they had ruined. A few leading men of these Franks rose to the 
highest offices of the empire. We have seen that Arbogast had been prime 
minister to Valentinian II, and that he disposed of the purple. Twelve 
years after his death the Franks, already settled in northern Gaul, tried 
to stop the great invasion of 406. Having failed to do so, they wished at 



196 The Western Empire Divided 

least to take their share of those provinces which the emperor himself was 
abandoning, and their tribes advanced into the interior of the country, 
each under its own chief or king. There were at that time Frankish kings 
at Cologne, Tournai, Cambrai and Therouanne. Of these kings Clodion, 
chief of the Salian Franks of the Tongres region (Limburg), is the first 
whose existence is well proven, for Pharamond, who is represented as reign- 
ing before him, is mentioned only in later chronicles. He captured Tournai 
and Cambrai, put all the Romans to death whom he found there, advanced 
towards the Somme and crossed it, and went as far as the neighborhood 
of Sens, where he was defeated by the Roman , general, Aetius (448). He 
did not survive his defeat. His relative, Merowig, who succeeded him, 
three years after%vards united with all the barbarians encamped in Gaul 
and with what were left of the Romans in opposition to the Huns. The 
battle of Chalons against Attila cost, it is said, the lives of three hundred 
thousand men, and saved the barbarian nations between the Rhine and the 
Pyrenees. Childeric, son of Merowig (458), was deposed by the Franks 
dissatisfied with his excesses, and his place was given to the Roman general, 
iEgidius. Recalled after eight years, which he had spent in Thuringia, he 
returned to reign over the Franks until his death (481), and was buried at 
Tournai, where his tomb was discovered in 1653. His son Chlodowig 
or Clovis was the real founder of the Frankish monarchy. 

Reign and Conquests of Clovis. — At the time of his accession Clovis 
ruled over only a few districts of Belgium, with the title of king of the 
Salian Franks living in the neighborhood of Tournai, and had command of 
four or five thousand warriors. Five years later, united with Ragnachar, 
king of Cambrai, near Soissons he defeated Syagrius, son of .-Egidius, who 
in the name of the empire was governing the country between the Somme and 
the Loire, forced the Visigoths, with whom the vanquished had taken refuge, 
to deliver him up, put him to death, and subdued the country as far as the 
Loire. Amiens, Beauvais, Paris and Rouen opened their gates to him be- 
cause, though yet a pagan, he favored the religion of his wife, Clotilda, a 
Burgundian princess who was a Catholic, while the Visigoths were Arians. 
A few years later the Alamans crossed the Rhine, and Clovis marched 
against them. He was in danger of defeat, it is said, when he appealed to 
Clotilda's God and promised to adopt her faith if victorious; then he was 
successful and pursued the defeated invaders across the Rhine into Suabia. 
On his return he and three thousand of his leuds were baptized in the Rheims 
cathedral (496). The Gallo-Roman population, oppressed by the Arian 
Burgundians and Visigoths, turned their hopes towards the converted king 
of the Franks. For the same reason some of his leuds became estranged 



The Western Empire Divided 197 

from him; but his successes, and especially the booty to be gamed, soon 
brought them back. Besides conquering the country as far as the Loire, 
he won the Armoricans as allies. Then he attacked the Burgundians, de- 
feated their king, Gundebald, the assassin of his brother, and imposed 
tribute on him (500). His next great undertaking was an expedition 
against the Visigoths. His army crossed the Loire and at Vougle, near 
Poitiers, defeated the enemy, among the slain being the Visigothic king, 
Alaric H (507). He conquered the whole south except Septimania, which 
he would also have reduced had not the great king of the Ostrogoths, 
Theodoric, sent aid to his western brethren. On returning home, Clovis 
found awaiting him ambassadors from the eastern emperor sent to confer 
on him the titles of consul and prince. He sullied his last years by murder- 
ing all the petty Prankish kings around him so as to gather in their realms 
and treasures. He died in 511 at the age of forty-five. The State he had 
founded now comprised the whole of Gaul except Gascony and Armorica 
(Brittany). Clovis had made Paris his capital, a central position from 
which he could more easily watch his conquests to the south and east. 

The Age of Fredegunda and Brunhilda. — Clovis*s four sons divided 
his heritage between them so that each had an almost equal portion of the 
territory north of the Loire, and also a share of the Roman cities of Aqui- 
taine, paying rich tributes. Childebert was king of Paris, Clotair of 
Soissons, Clodomir of Orleans, and Thierry of Metz or Austrasia. The 
impulse given by Clovis continued for some time. Thierry drove the 
Danes away from the estuary of the Meuse and conquered Thuringia, 
while Clotair and Childebert, at the instigation of their mother, abolished 
royalty in Burgundy. In 533 the Austrasians conquered the Ostrogothic 
provinces west of the Alps, and then ravaged the whole Italian peninsula. 
The kings of Paris and Soissons, so as not to be deserted by their lends, 
led them as marauders into Spain, where they captured Pampeluna. Be- 
yond the Rhine the Alamans and the Bavarians acknowledged the suprem- 
acy of the Franks, and the Saxons paid tribute to them. 

In 558, by the death of his three brothers, Clotair became sole ruler 
of all of Clevis's dominions. It was only for a short time, however, for 
he died three years later and a second Prankish tetrarchy was arranged 
between his four sons, Caribert reigning at Paris, Gontran at Orleans 
and over Burgundy, Chilperic at Soissons, and Sigebert over Austrasia, 
with a share in the south also to each. At this time began the rivalry, 
which kept on increasing, between the eastern Franks or Austrasians and 
the western or Neustrians, who were becoming more civilized by closer 
contact with the Gallo-Romans, compared with whom they formed 



ips The Western Empire. Divided 

only a minority. This rivalry first became acute through the jealousy of 
two women. Sigebert had married Brunhilda, daughter of Athanagild, 
king of the Visigoths, who was beautiful and ambitious. Chilperic, so 
as to have also a royal spouse, obtained the hand of Galswintha, Brun- 
hilda's sister, but soon returned to his imperious concubine, Fredegunda, 
who had her rival strangled and took her place (567). Brunhilda, to 
avenge her sister, urged her husband to attack Neustria. Sigebert, vic- 
torious, was about to have himself proclaimed king of the Neustrians 
when two of Fredegunda's hirelings murdered him (575)- As he left 
only a son who was a mere child, Chilperic II, the Austrasians began to be 
governed by a Mayor of the Palace. These officials, originally mere over- 
seers of the king's household, were now to acquire considerable influence, 
to the advantage of the as yet barbarian aristocracy, already intensely 
hostile to royalty, and to keep it in tutelage until the Merovingian line 
made way for a new royal house. Civil war, rebellion, open murder and 
assassination ran rampant for many years, until Brunhilda, whose son had 
been done to death, again seized the reins of government and, in the name 
of two of her grandsons, reigned at one and the same time in Austrasia and 
Burgundy. Friendly to Roman civilization, she protected the arts, had 
roads built, monasteries erected, and the worship of idols destroyed. She 
aided the missionaries who went to preach Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons, 
and Pope Gregory the Great wrote to her a letter of thanks. But along 
with the traditions of the Roman empire which it pleased her to revive, she 
also wished to take up that of a government strong enough to restore order 
everywhere. She undertook to eliminate coarse manners and licentious 
morals from the clergy, into whose ranks many barbarians had entered; 
but especially did she war against the lawlessness of the leuds. They 
turned secretly towards the king of Paris, Clotair II, son of Fredegunda, 
and offered to acknowledge him as king of Burgundy and Austrasia if he 
would rid them of Brunhilda, He sent an army against her; abandoned 
by her own people, she was captured along with her grandsons, whom 
Clotair caused to be murdered, and at the same time he ordered that the 
aged queen be tied to the tail of an untamed horse (613). 

Sluggard Kings and Mayors of the Palace. — For the third time 
unity of the Prankish monarchy was restored by Clotair II. During his 
reign the Council of Paris, in which seventy-nine bishops and a large 
number of laymen took part, promulgated a so-called Perpetual Constitu- 
tion, which greatly advanced the victory of the lay and ecclesiastical aris- 
tocracy. Taxes imposed by the four sons of Clotair I were abolished; 
benefices granted were irrevocably confirmed; Church elections were 



The Western Empire Divided 199 

reserved to the provincial council, the clergy and the people of the cities; 
ecclesiastical jurisdiction was extended, etc. Royalty, however, regained 
strength under Dagobert (628), whose reign the most brilliant of the Merov- 
ingian kings, gave to the Franks the preponderance in western Europe. He 
stopped the incursions of the Venedi (Wends, a Slavic people), over whom 
a Frankish merchant had become king, opposed those of the Slavonians in 
Thuringia and of the Saxon tribes, and freed Bavaria from an invasion of 
Bulgarians. In Gaul he procured the submission of the Basques and the 
alliance of the Bretons, whose chief had assumed the title of king. He 
knew how to choose able ministers, and to win an honest popularity by 
making a personal tour of his kingdoms in order to render justice to the 
lowly as well as to the great. He corrected the laws of the Salians, the 
Ripuarians, the Alamans and the Bavarians, encouraged commerce and 
industry, and had the abbey of St. Denis, near Paris, built. 

Dagobert, however, carried with him to his grave (638) the power of the 
Merovingians. After him come the Sluggard Kings (Rois Faineants). 
But Grimoald, Austrasian mayor of the palace, who dared try to put his 
own son on the throne, was slain by the leuds (656), which deferred usurpa- 
tion. Royalty found, moreover, a formidable champion in the Neustrian 
mayor of the palace, Ebroi'n, who renewed more ertergetically the struggle 
of Brunhilda and Dagobert against the leuds and their leader, St. Leger, 
bishop of Autun. In a document of the year 676 he caused to be written: 
"Those seem to lose their benefices justly who have been convicted of 
unfaithfulness to those from whom they hold them." Many whose inclina- 
tion to independence was too pronounced were put to death, deprived of 
their property, or banished. The Austrasian leuds made common cause 
with the exiles; in 679 they deposed their Merovingian king, and confided 
authority to the two mayors, Martin and Pepin of Heristal with the title 
of Princes of the Franks. Defeated at Leucofao by Ebroin, after his 
death they won the battle of Testry, which gave Neustria to them (687). 
From that day Pepin of Heristal really reigned without assuming the title 
of king, and we shall see his successors build up the Frankish Empire, in 
which the Germanic invasion culminated. 



CHAPTER XIII 



The Mohammedan and Carolingian Eras 



Arabia and Mohammed. — After the Germanic invasion, coming 
from the north, the Arabian invasion advanced from the south. Arabia, 
whose tribes then appeared for the first time on the stage of history, is 
a vast peninsula of one hundred and twenty-six thousand square leagues, 
which opens to the north on Asia through broad deserts, and in the north- 
west is connected with Africa by the isthmus of Suez. On the other sides 
it is bounded by the Red Sea, the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb (Gate of Tears), 
the Indian Ocean, the strait of Ormuz and the Persian Gulf. The an- 
cients, who knew it but very imperfectly, divided it into three parts, name- 
ly, Arabia Petraea or Sinai peninsula, Arabia Deserta or Nedjed, com- 
prising the deserts extending from the Red Sea to the Euphrates, and 
Arabia Felix or Yemen. Religion was there a mixture of Christianity, 
introduced by the Abyssinians and the Greeks; Sabeism, taught by the 
Persians; Judaism, which had infiltrated everywhere in the wake of the 
Jews; and especially idolatry. The temple of the Caaba, in the holy 
city of Mecca, contained three hundred and sixty idols, the guardianship 
of which was entrusted to the illustrious family of the Coreishites. There 
was much religious indifference amid so many forms of worship. Those 
who attracted the multitude were the poets, who were already preparing 
the language of Islam in those Struggles of Glory, poetical tournaments 
in which frequently recurred the idea of a supreme Being, Allah, a belief 
indigenous in such a country. 

Mohammed was born in 570, his father being the Coreishite Abdallah. 
Left an orphan and penniless in early childhood, he became a camel driver, 
traveled to Syria, where he became well acquainted with a monk of Bostra, 
and, by his honesty and intelligence, led a noble rich widow, Khadidjah, to 
become his wife. From that time he could devote himself to his medita- 
tions. At the age of forty he had fixed his ideas, and he opened his mind 
concerning his plans to his wife, his cousin Ah, his freedman Zeid, and 
his friend Abu Bekr, saying he wished to restore its primitive purity to 
the religion of Abraham. He told them he had received from God, through 
200 



The Mohammedan and CaroHngian Eras 201 

the angel Gabriel, the verses of a book that would excel all books (Al 
Koran), and he designated his new religion by the name of Islam, which 
means entire resignation to God's will. They believed in him, and to the 
new religion Abu Bekr attracted Othman, and then the brilliant Omar. 
The number of his proselytes increased daily, and the Coreishites aimed 
against him persecutions that obliged him to flee to Yatreb or Medina 
(622). This is the year of the Hegira or Hejra (flight), with which the 
era of the Mussulmans begins. From Yatreb (Medinat-al-lSTabi, City 
of the Prophet) he undertook war against the Coreishites, and in 624 
with three hundred followers defeated a thousand of them. Defeated 
afterwards at Mount Ohud, he gained a decided advantage in the War 
of the Nations or of the Trench, and in 630 returned to Mecca, where 
he destroyed all the idols, saying: "Truth has come, let falsehood dis- 
appear. " Having from that time become the rehgious leader of Arabia, 
he wrote threatening letters to Chosroes, king of Persia, and Heraclius, 
emperor of the East, and was about to undertake the holy war (jehad) 
against them when he died (632). There could be no more opportune 
time for it, as both were exhausted after a long and fierce struggle, and 
Egypt and Syria were greatly disafi^ected against Constantinople, both 
by reason of heresy and of over-taxation. 

Character of the Koran. — The Koran is the collection of all the rev- 
elations that fell, as occasion off'ered, from the prophet's lips and col- 
lected in a first edition by order of the CaHph Abu Bekr, and in a second 
by that of the Caliph Othman. Made up of one hundred and fourteen 
chapters or surats, subdivided into verses, it contains the religious and 
civil laws of the Mussulmans. The whole basis of dogma is in these 
words: "God alone is great, and Mohammed is his prophet." In Allah, 
the only and jealous God, the Koran does not admit plurality of persons, 
and besides him he places no inferior divinity. He rejects every idea of 
a God becoming man; but he teaches that God has revealed himself 
through a series of prophets, of whom Mohammed is the last and most 
complete; those who preceded him are Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses 
and Christ, with whom Allah communicated through angels, his messen- 
gers. Mohammed acknowledged that Christ had had the gift of mir- 
acles and that he himself had it not. He preached the immortality of the 
soul, the resurrection of the body, and the participation of this portion 
of our being in the joys or suff"erings of a future life. A paradise of de- 
lights for the senses was promised to the good, a burning hell to the wick- 
ed. But in that sensual paradise conceived to win the mob there were also 
spiritual joys: "The most favored of God will be he who will see his face 



202 The Mohammedan and CaroHngian Eras 

evening and morning, a happiness that will surpass all the pleasures of 
the senses, as the ocean surpasses a dewdrop." 

He elevated the condition of the Arabian women. "A son," he said, 
"wins paradise at his mother's feet." Daughters did not inherit; he 
assigned to them half of their brother's share. While upholding the 
authority of the husband, he ordered him to be to his wife a protector 
full of respect and attentions. If he let polygamy remain in force, so as 
not to come in conflict with the morals of the Orient, he permitted only 
four lawful wives, and even advised, as a praiseworthy act, confining 
oneself to one only. The Koran decrees severe penalties against theft, 
usury, fraud, and false testimony, and prescribes almsgiving. It lays 
down strict rules for the practice of religion — the Rhamadan fast, the 
observance of the four sacred months, an old custom which, by a sort of 
Truce of God, suspended the hostilities of the faithful with one another, 
the great annual pilgrimage to Mecca, in which Mohammed had installed 
the seat of the new religion, the five prayers a day, the ablutions, either 
with water or with the sand of the desert, circumcision, abstinence from 
wine, etc. All who do not believe in Islam are enemies. Nevertheless, 
in regard to Christians and Jews, it suffices not to become allied with 
them in blood, and war should be made on them only if they provoke 
it. As for others, it is the duty of every good Mussulman to attack them, 
to pursue them, and to kill them if they do not embrace the Prophet's 
religion. These precepts, hopes and threats were powerful mainsprings 
that drove the Arabs, sabre in hand, in all directions. 

The Khalifate, Arab Conquests, the Ommiads. — Mohammed 
had not designated his successor; but Abu Bekr, whom he had entrusted 
with saying the prayer in his stead, was acknowledged as Khalif, or reli- 
gious, civil, and military head (632). Then Abu Bekr designated Omar 
(634), and after Omar Othman was elected (644), who was succeeded 
(655) by Ali, the husband of Fatima, the Prophet's daughter, and chief 
of the party of the Fatimites, who originated the great Mussulman sect 
of the Shiites or separatists (the Persians), who regard Ali as having been 
unjustly dispossessed after Mohammed's death. The Sunnites or ad- 
herents of tradition (the Turks) acknowledge as lawful Abu Bekr, Omar 
and Othman. After Ali (661), hereditary rule begins with the Ommiads. 
This period (632-661) is that of the great conquests. Khaled and Amru, 
by the victories of Aiznadin and Yermuk, took Syria from the emperor 
of the east, Heraclius, who had temporarily restored the standing of the 
Greek empire by his brilliant expeditions against Persia. From 632 
to 642 Persia was conquered by the victories of Cadesiah, Jalula and 



The Mohammedan and Carolingian Eras 203 

Nehavend, and the last of the Sassanides, Yezdegerd, went in vain to 
ask aid of the emperor of China. In 639 Amru entered Egypt, and made 
himself master of it after having besieged Alexandria for fourteen months. 

The usurpation of Moawiah, chief of the Ommiads (661), who made 
the government despotic and Damascus his capital, was followed by dis- 
cords in which blood flowed freely for thirty years. The impulse of con- 
quest, almost suspended, was renewed, about 691, under Abd-el-Melek. 
In the east, Transoxiana and Sogdiana were conquered, and India was 
menaced (707); in the north, an attack on Constantinople failed because 
of the Greek fire; but in the west the Arab power was established along 
the whole northern coast of Africa. Kairouan was founded, Carthage 
captured, a revolt of the Moors suppressed, and the Pillars of Hercules 
were passed by Tarik, who gave them his name, Gibraltar (Gebr-al-Tarik) 
or mountain of Tarik (711). The monarchy of the Visigoths, very much 
weakened by racial and religious dissensions, and a prey to the disorders, 
of its systems of elective kingship, succumbed in the battle of Xeres (711)- 
Of the whole peninsula, the Christians retained only a corner in the moun- 
tains of the Asturias, where Pelagius took refuge with his companions. 
Carried along by the same impulse, the rapid conquerors crossed the Pyrenees 
occupied Septimania, ravaged Aquitaine, and were already marching on 
Tours when Charles Martel stopped them by the victory of Poitiers (732). 

Division of the Khalifate. — ^Thus with one bound the Arabs had 
reached the Pyrenees, and the Himalayas with another; and the crescent 
shone on a territory two thousand leagues long. But geography, the great- 
est of forces for or against nascent States, doomed their empire to being soon 
divided between several masters, because it extended too far to have a centre 
and because it contained too many different peoples to have unity. The 
various influences of countries and races were soon seen manifesting them- 
selves, and then developing into struggles with one another; dynasties 
representing such or such a nationality produced by geography and history 
disputing for the throne and, in consequence of these disorders, the empire 
falling into fragments. In 750 the Syrian dynasty of the Ommiads was over- 
thrown by Abul Abbas, who founded the dynasty of the Abbassides, de- 
scended from an uncle of Mohammed. A single Ommiad, escaping pro- 
scription, fled to Spain, and there set up the khalifate of the west or of 
Cordova (755)- The Abbassides, therefore, now reigned over only the 
khalifate of the east or of Bagdad, the new capital built on the Tigris in 
762, near ancient Seleucia. There they furnished a succession of great 
men, such as Almanzor (754), Harun-al-Raschid or the Just (786), and 
Al-Mamoun (813), all protectors of literature, art and science, which they 



204 The Mohammedan and CaroHngian Eras 

had borrowed from the Greeks. But in those places which have always 
known despotism, and where the shade of the great kings seems still to 
wander, the khalifs soon regarded themselves as God's image on earth. 
A pompous court separated them from their people; immense wealth 
superseded Omar's poverty, and warlike ardor became extinct in the environ- 
ment of a life of effeminacy. Then those men who no longer knew how 
to fight purchased slaves to turn them into soldiers who became their masters. 
After the introduction into the palace of a Turkish guard that filled it 
with disorder and violence, that made or unmade sovereigns at its caprice, 
the Abbassides fell into the condition of the sluggard kings of the Franks. 
The Turcoman Togrul Beg left to the khalifate only an empty religious 
authority (1058), and founded the power of the Seljukian Turks. Since 
the ninth century Africa had been detached from the Bagdad khalifate and 
divided between three dynasties, namely, the Edrissites at Fez, the Agla- 
bites at Kairouan, and the Fatimites at Cairo. These last pretended to be 
descended from Fatima, Mohammed's daughter. 

As for the khalifate of Cordova, it, like that of Cairo, had bright days. 
Many Christians, treated with moderation, mingled with the Mussulmans 
and formed the active population of the Mozarabs. The Jews, always so 
shrewd, were freed from the restrictions of the laws of the Visigoths. Com- 
merce, industry and agriculture prospered, then, and brought great wealth 
to the khalifs. Weakened by the conquests of Charlemagne's lieutenants 
north of the Ebro, the khalifate of Cordova suffered further from the revolts 
of the Walis or provincial governors, and from the insurrection of the Beni 
Hafsun banditti, which lasted eighty years. The reigns of Abd-er-Rhaman I 
(755), Hesham I (787), Al-Hakem I, Abd-er-Rhuman II, etc., were very 
prosperous. That of Abd-er-Rhaman III surpassed them all (912-961). 
This khalifs successes and those of Almanzor, prime minister to Hesham II, 
stopped at the Douro and the Ebro the progress of the Christian kingdom 
founded in the north. But after Almanzor everything crumbled. An 
African guard gave the palace up to bloody anarchy that favored the Walis' 
attempts to gain independence. In loio Murcia, Badajoz, Granada, Sara- 
gossa, Valencia, Seville, Toledo, Carmona and Algeciras were so many 
independent principalities. In 103 1 Hesham, the last descendant of the 
Ommiads, was deposed, and gladly withdrew into obscurity. Soon after- 
wards the very title of khalif disappeared. 

Arab Civilization. — Such was the fate of Arab empire in the three 
sections of the world, Asia, Africa and Europe— sudden and irresistible 
expansion, and then partition and general weakening after the lapse of a 
few centuries. But the Arabs had established their religion, their language, 



The Mohammedan and CaroHngian Eras 205 

and the laws of their Koran over a large number of peoples, and transmitted 
to the Europe of the Middle Ages industries and sciences of which they were, 
if not the inventors, at least the propagators. While Europe was sunk in 
the deep darkness of barbarism, Bagdad, Bassorah, Samarkand, Damascus, 
Cairo, Kairouan, Fez, Granada and Cordova were so many great intellectual 
centres. The Koran had fixed the language, which has been preserved to our 
own day, such as Mohammed spoke it, in literary Arabic, while the ages and 
local influences made the common tongue undergo widely differing trans- 
formations. That Arabic, wonderfully rich in words expressing the object 
and impressions of the desert, yielded, however, to all the uses of literature 
and science. From the dying school of Alexandria the Arabs had received 
Aristotle, whom they undertook to commentate with extreme ardor, and 
occasionally the commentators were themselves philosophers worthy of con- 
sideration. Such in the east were Avicenna, and in the west Averroes, who 
was so famous in the Middle Ages for having transmitted to the Christians of 
Europe the knowledge of the Stagyrite. From the second Abbasside, 
Almanzor, the exact sciences received an impulse, owing to the scholars 
whom the khalifs attracted from Constantinople. In the first half of the 
ninth century two Bagdad astronomers measured a degree of the meridian 
in the plain of Sennaar. Ere long Euclid received comment, Ptolemy's 
tables were corrected, the obliquity of the ecliptic was calculated more 
exactly, as was also the precession of the equinoxes, the diff^erence between 
the solar and the common years was better determined, new instruments of 
precision were invented, and at Samarkand an admirable observatory was 
built. Nevertheless, the invention of Algebra and the figures commonly 
called Arabic which we now use are commonly but erroneously attributed 
to the Arabs; probably they only transmitted to Europe what they had 
found in the learned school of Alexandria. We have received from them 
in the same way the compass and gunpowder. They excelled in medicine, 
in which they were also the pupils of the ancients, as is shown by the many 
treatises of Averroes on Galen. In architecture they also borrowed much 
from the Greeks; it is to the Byzantine style that their horse-shoe arch 
belongs. They cultivated neither painting nor sculpture, because their 
religion forbade them to represent the human form; but their Arabesques 
are a sort of ornamentation that is peculiar to them. One may see at 
Cordova, Granada and Cairo the magnificent remains of this architecture. 
As regards agriculture and industry, we have imagined nothing superior to 
their system of irrigation, which the peasants of Valencia and Granada 
still follow, and the reputation of the Toledo blades, the Granada silks, 
the blue and green cloths of Cuen^a, and the harness, saddles and leathers 
of C9rdova, was spread throughout the whole of Europe. But that civili- 



2o6 The Mohammedan and CaroHngian Eras 

zation, like the domination under which it bloomed, disappeared almost 
as quickly as it had been formed. 

The Two Differing Invasions, and Ecclesiastical Society. — The 

Arab invasion had begun with unity of faith, command and direction; it 
failed through schism, division and weakness. The Germanic invasion, 
made at haphazard and with a view merely to pillage, under leaders whom 
no common idea united, had at first given birth to a number of fragile 
kingdoms; but it had taken place in lands where the memory of the Roman 
empire still lived and where a new principle of unity arose, that of the Church. 
Accordingly, after having wandered for two centuries in chaos and amid 
ruins of their own making, nearly all of these adventurers came to be united 
under the sway of a single family, that of the Carolingians, which tried to 
reconstitute the State and power, while the Pope, with his bishops and monks, 
was organizing the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The harmony of these two 
powers formed the glory of Charlemagne's reign; their rivalry brought 
on the great struggle of the Middle Ages, that between the priesthood and 
the empire. 

The Roman empire in the west had perished, and the barbarians had so 
far raised on its ruins only fragile edifices. A single institution, the Church 
traversed the ages with a regular development in accordance with the spirit 
of its beginning, constantly gaining in power and being strengthened by 
the unity of its government. This society had at first been thoroughly 
democratic, with elected heads. When it emerged mutilated, but radiant 
from the Catacombs and the amphitheatres, when Constantine had turned 
the Roman world over to it, and when in its Councils it had fixed its dogma 
and discipline, it found itself constituted with a strictly ordered hierarchy 
in which election remained for the highest dignity, the episcopate and the 
Papacy, but not for the lower grades, which the bishop conferred. If we 
consider the territorial districtings, the bishop governed the diocese, which 
was rather late divided into curial parishes. Several dioceses formed the 
ecclesiastical province of the archbishop or metropolitan, above whom 
stood the bishops of the great capitals with the title of patriarchs or primates 
and, lastly, the See of Rome had a supremacy officially asserted by the 
Council of Constantinople in 381. In this picture we recognize the whole 
civil organization of the empire. Thus the authority in which the mass 
of the faithful at first participated was gradually withdrawn from the lower 
strata, passed to the bishops, and was at last concentrated in the Pope as 
head over all. This ascension of religious authority, which reached its 
climax only a little over a generation ago, by the proclamation of the dogma 
of Papal infallibility, is the whole internal history of the Church. But in 



The Mohammedan and Carolingian Eras 207 

the eighth century the priestly monarchy had as yet gone only midway to 
the goal to which Boniface VIII was to lead it. 

The Church in the Early Middle Ages.— The bishop of Rome owned 
great estates in Italy, and in the city, the most famous in the world, the 
important place which, in the closing years of the empire, had been attributed 
to the bishops in municipal government. The Pope, then, had, besides his 
spiritual authority, means of action through the revenues from the property 
given to his Church, and an authority which grew naturally after the fall of 
the empire in the west and of Theodoric's kingdom. In temporalities he 
was subject to the emperor of Constantinople and his representative in Italy, 
the exarch of Ravenna; but the yoke was light, owing to distance and the 
embarrassments of the exarch, whom the Lombards were threatening and 
at last drove out. Gregory the Great (590-604) did much for the develop- 
ment of that power. At first he saved Rome from attack by the Lombards; 
then he energetically took in hand the conversion of heretics and pagans, work 
that, before him, was carried on at random. He brought the Visigoths into 
the fold of the Catholic Church, won over to the faith England, Helvetia 
and Bavaria, multiplied monasteries in which a faithful militia lived under 
the rule of St. Benedict, and fastened around the bishops the bond of dis- 
cipline. His successors continued the work of the missions, and the new 
churches, daughters of Rome, showed towards their metropolis a respectful 
attachment. Holland and Friesland were evangelized, and St. Boniface was 
appointed by the Pope, in 723, as bishop of Germany, whither he went to give 
those vast provinces to Rome. Thus did the new Rome become a conqueror 
and mistress. Yet its head remained the emperor's subject; but a rupture 
was inevitable. When Justinian II wanted to seize Pope Sergius for reject- 
ing the canons of the Council in Trullo, the soldiers refused to obey; when 
Leo the Iconoclast ordered the images broken in Rom.e, the people drove 
the imperial prefect from the city and the Pope roused up the Italians 
against the heretical prince (726). The Lombards took advantage of this 
agitation to seize the exarchate of Ravenna, and tried to lay hands on Rome 
itself. It was then that Gregory III had recourse to the chiefs of the 
Austrasian Franks. 

Charles Martel and Pepin the Short. — After the death of Pepin of 
Heristal (715), his illegitimate son, Charles, seized the mayorship, with the 
consent of the lends, and defeated the Neustrians, who, in coalition with the 
Saxons and the Aquitanians, strove to destroy the effects of the battle of 
Testry. He was a valiant man. By the battle of Tours (732) he made the 
Arab invaders retrace their steps to the farther side of the Pyrenees by one 



2o8 The Mohammedan and CaroHngian Eras 

and the same blow saving Christendom and deterring Germanic invasion. 
In the east he beat the Saxons and Bavarians, leaving much in that direction, 
however, to be done by his successors. In the south, he undertook to subdue 
Aquitaine, ever indocile to the authority of the chiefs of northern Gaul. 
His renown was in keeping with his power. In 741 two nuncios from Gregory 
III came to him bearing magnificent presents, the keys of the sepulchre 
of St. Peter, the titles of consul and patrician, and a supplicating letter. 
It was the sovereignty of Rome, neglected and almost abandoned by Con- 
stantinople, that the Supreme Pontiff was offering to the victor over the 
Saracens, along with the protectorate of the Roman Church. In his letter 
Gregory implored the aid of Charles against an energetic and ambitious 
prince, Luitprand, king of the Lombards, who wanted to bring the whole 
Italian peninsula under his sway. Charles had not time to answer that ap- 
peal. He died in 741, and his sons, Carloman and Pepin,who succeeded him 
as mayors of the palace in Austrasia and Neustria, were at first too busy along 
all their frontiers to think of Italy. But in 747, when Carloman had with- 
drawn to the monastery of Monte Casino, Pepin, after dispossessing his 
nephews, decided to put on his own head that crown which was now but a 
mockery on that of the sluggard king. On this subject he consulted Pope 
Zachary, who answered that the title belonged to him who had the power, 
and St. Boniface renewed for him the Hebrew solemnity of anointing with 
the holy oil (752). The last of the Merovingians was shut up in a convent. 
Two years later Stephen II went to France to anoint the Austrasian mayor 
for the second time. Pepin rewarded the Pope by giving him the Pentapolis 
and the exarchate of Ravenna, which he conquered from the Lombards. 
Thus at the same time he effected two important revolutions — he got the 
Pope to sanction a violation of royal heredity, and he laid the foundation of 
the temporal sovereignty of the Popes. Pepin's other wars were directed 
against the Saxons, whom he defeated, the Saracens, from whom he took 
Septimania, and the Aquitanians, whom he subdued after eight years of 
ravagings and combats. 

Charlemagne King of the Lombards and Patrician of Rome. — The 

second Prankish monarchy, founded by Pepin the Short reached its apogee 
under his son Charles the Great (Charlemagne being old French for Carolus 
Magnus), who completed the work of his two predecessors and furnished the 
greatest reign which the history of the Germanic invasion presents. At all 
points where his grandfather and father had waged war, he likewise did so to 
completion. The eastern frontier was that menaced the most, by Saxons, 
Danes, Slavs, Bavarians and Avars. He led eighteen expeditions against 
the Saxons, three against the Danes, one against the Bavarians, four against 



The Mohammedan and Carohngian Eras 209 

the slavs, and four against the Avars. He led seven against the Saracens 
of Spain, five against those of Italy, five against the Lombards, and two 
against the Greeks. If we add to these, those he directed against certain 
tribes already comprised in the Frankish empire, but far from subdued, 
namely, one against the Thuringians, one against the Aquitanians, and 
two against the Bretons, we have a total of fifty-three expeditions which 
Charlemagne led for the most part in person. He had first divided Pepin's 
heritage with his brother Carloman (768). That prince dying three years 
later, Charles became sole master by seizing Austrasia, to the prejudice of 
his nephews, who fled to the court of Desiderius, king of the Lombards 
while he was for the first time beating the Saxons, Pope Adrian I called him 
against Desiderius, who had invaded the exarchate. He crossed the Alps, 
vanquished the Lombards, whose king became a monk, shut Carloman's 
sons up in a convent, and in triumph entered Rome, where he confirmed 
Pepin's donation to the Pope. To the title of king of the Franks he now 
added the titles of king of the Lombards and patrician, which reserved to him 
the sovereignty over Rome and all the domains of the Holy See (774). 

Charlemagne's Conquest of Germany. — Begun in 771, the war 
against the Saxons came to an end only in 804, a period of thirty-three years. 
That people, still wholly barbarian, occupied the lower courses of the Weser 
and the Elbe — ^Westphalians in the west, Ostphalians in the east, Angarians 
in the south, and Nordalbingians on the right bank of the Elbe. Still pagans, 
they adored the idol called Irminsul (Hermann-Saul), consecrated to the 
victor over Varus, and when St. Libuinus wished to convert them, they 
murdered his companions.. Charlemagne supported his missionaries, 
spiritual conquerors who prepared the way for the others, captured Ehres- 
burg, and ordered Irminsul to be broken to bits. Then appeared Wittikind 
the Hermann of another age. Against this valiant chief the most formidable 
expeditions long remained powerless. When his fellow-countrymen were 
compelled to go and take the oath to the conqueror in Paderborn (777), 
he fled to the very extremity of Germany, and then returned to rekindle war. 
After a great victory at Buckholz, Charlemagne transferred ten thousand 
Saxon families to Belgium and Helvetia; he deprived the Saxons remaining 
in the country of their assemblies and judges, set over them Frankish counts 
and divided their territory between bishops, abbots and priests, on condition 
they would preach and baptize there. The bishoprics of Minden, Halber- 
stadt, Verden and Bremen were established, and latei on those of Munster 
Hildesheim, Osnabruck and Paderborn. But Wittikind, after being a 
refugee among the Danes, returned once more, and defeated several Frankish 
generals. The massacre of four thousanrf, Saxon prisoners stirred up a 

14 



2IO The Mohammedan and CaroHngian Eras 

desperate insurrection; two victories, at Dermoid and Osnabruck, and a 
winter spent in arms in the snows of Saxony, were necessary to overcome the 
obstinacy of Wittikind, who at last consented to receive baptism. Saxony, 
deluged with blood, was obliged to submit to the severe laws dictated by the 
conqueror (804). 

The submission of Bavaria had preceded that of Saxony. Its provinces 
were divided into countries, and its last duke was cloistered in the monastery 
of Jumieges. Behind the Bavarians the Avars, a Hunnic nation settled 
in ancient Pannonia, kept the spoils of the world in an immense intrenched 
camp called the Ring. After bloody combats one of Charlemagne's sons 
succeeded in capturing the Ring, and imposed a tribute on the remnants of 
that people. In the south the Franks were less fortunate. The disaster of 
Roncesvalles, the resistance of the Basques, and that of the Mussulmans of 
Spain let the Franks occupy only outposts beyond the Pyrenees, in the Ebro 
valley, and it was only in 812 that Charlemagne's eldest son, Louis, king of 
Aquitaine, stationed his margraves to the south of the Pyrenees. By these 
wars the whole Germanic race, except the Anglo-Saxons of Great Britain and 
the Northmen of Scandinavia, was united under a single sceptre. The 
foreign and hostile races bordering its frontiers, Slavs, Avars and Arabs had, 
been driven back or kept in check, and on the map of the world, instead of the 
confusion of the preceding ages, there were seen from the Indus to the 
Atlantic four great States, namely, the two empires, German and Greek, and 
the two khalifates, Bagdad and Cordova. 

Charlemagne as Emperor. — The frontiers of Charlemagne's empire 
were: On the north and west the ocean, from the mouth of the Elbe to the 
Spanish shore of the Bay of Biscay; on the south the Pyrenees and, in Spain 
a part of the Ebro's course; in Italy the Garigliano and the Pescara, except 
Gaeta, which was still Greek; in Illyria the Cettina, or the Narenta,except 
the cities of Trau, Zara and Spalatro; and on the east the Bosna, the Save as 
far as its confluence with the Danube, the Theiss, the mountains of Bohemia, 
the Saale, the Elbe and the Eyder. Outside of this vast inclosure, within 
which everything was subject, tributary tribes formed a protecting zone 
around the CaroHngian empire. Such were the Navarrese, the Beneven- 
tines, the Nordalbingian Saxons, the Obotrites, the Wiltzes and the Sorabs, 
all watched by the frontier counts. Brittany and Bohemia had been ravaged, 
but not conquered. 

From the year 800 the master of this vast domination was emperor. 
During the Christmas festivities of that year Pope Leo III had placed upon 
his head the crown of the Caesars. Thus was consummated the alliance of 
the supreme head of German society and of the supreme head of the Church. 



The Mohammedan and CaroHngian Eras 211 

On assuming this title, Charlemagne also assumed all the rights of the 
emperors over Rome and its bishop. It seemed, therefore, as if unity, 
harmony and peace were about to be at last restored in the western world. 
This resurrection of the empire would, on the contrary, bring trouble to all 
composing it and rejoicing in it — to the emperor, who, not having the support 
of an able administration, could not bear that great burden; to Italy, which 
would reap a sad harvest of wars and be often robbed of its independence. 
As for the two allies of the year 800, the Pope and the Emperor, they would 
soon be the irreconcilable adversaries who would carry on the quarrel about 
investitures and the wars between Guelfs and Ghibelines. 

Government under Charlemagne.— In spite of his Roman title, 

Charlemagne remained the head of the Germanic race, and especially of the 

victorious nation of the Austrasians, whose language he continued to speak, 

whose garments he continued to wear, and in whose land he continued to live 

(Aachen or Aix-la-Chapelle was his favorite residence. But he displayed 

wisdom that had nothing barbarian about it. Twice a year the national 

assembly gathered around him. Bishops, leuds, free men, and imperial 

agents betook themselves thither from all the extremities of the empire, and 

came to inform the emperor of what was happening in their provinces. The 

nobles met apart from the multitude of free men to discuss and draw up the 

capitularies, sixty-five of which have come down to us, comprising eleven 

hundred and fifty-one articles on all the subjects of civil and ecclesiastical 

government. Iinperial envoys (missi dominici) traversed four times a year 

the districts subject to their supervision, two by two, usually a count and a 

bishop, so as to act as a check on each other, and to provide for all the needs 

of both lay and religious society. They gave an account to the emperor of 

the state of the provinces, which still retained their dukes, counts, and judges 

or hundreders, according to the extent of the district over which each of 

them was appointed. Every owner of at least twelve acres owed military 

service. Bishops and abbots were personally exempted, but had to send 

their men to the army. Justice was rendered in the provincial assemblies, no 

longer by all the free men, who had ceased to appear there, but by a certain 

number of aldermen (echevins, scabini), seven at least, who formed a jury 

and passed judgment under the presidency of the count or of the hundreder, 

with appeal reserved to the missi dominici. Since the beginning of the 

seventh century there were no public taxes; the king received only what was 

due to him as proprietor by his numerous tenants, the fruits and revenues 

of his domains, the personal and real services of the counts and the holders 

of royal benefices, the gratuitous offerings of the nobility, and the tribute 

of the conquered countries. Proprietors were obliged to contribute to 



212 The Mohammedan and CaroHngian Eras 

the prince's expenditures or to that of his agents, when they passed through 
their lands; they were charged, besides, with the maintenance of the roads, 
bridges, etc. The army equipped itself and Hved at its own expense, without 
pay; the land which the soldier had received took its place. 

Learning and Literature under Charlemagne. — Charlemagne would 
gladly have dispelled the darkness with which the invasion had covered the 
world. All literature had taken refuge in the monasteries, especially in those 
of the Benedictine order, founded in the early part of the sixth century by 
Benedict of Nursia. The rule drawn up by him imposed on the monks the 
copying of the old manuscripts. So as to bring letters out of the convents 
and diffuse them among the people, Charles founded schools and obliged his 
officials to send their children to them. He himself established in his own 
palace an academy of which he was a member. He began a Tudesque (Teu- 
tonic) grammar, and wrote Latin poems. Alcuin, an English monk, whom 
he induced to come to him and made abbot of St. Martin's of Tours, and 
Eginhard (Einhard), his secretary and perhaps his son-in-law, who later on 
wrote his Life, are the chief literary names of the period. 

In this way had Charlemagne striven to bring order of chaos, light 
into darkness, by organizing the Germanic and Christian society which he 
gathered around the restored throne of the emperors of the west- an immense 
effort that has won for his name a place alongside the three or four names 
to which the world bows; and yet it was a comparatively fruitless effort, 
because all the moral forces of the time, all the instincts and all the interests 
of the peoples stood in the way of his success. Even in old Gaul political 
unity could be maintained only on condition that an energetic hand knew 
how to uphold it. Beyond the Rhine, out of the Babel of tribes that were 
continually in confused motion there, he had formed an organized people 
under counts and dukes to serve as a living barrier against the Slavs ; Ger- 
many was succeeded by Alamania, and that was a great advance. But 
the day when he went to Rome to assume the crown of the emperors proved 
afterwards, by the overweening ambition of some of his successors, to be 
a sad day for Italy. That beautiful country had thereafter a foreign master 
who resided afar off and came to visit only to do violence to it with greedy 
and barbarous hordes. How much blood flowed for centuries to continue 
this part of Charlemagne's work! How many ruins were made in that 
country of innumerable cities and splendid monuments, to say nothing of 
the saddest of all, that which seemed so long irreparable, the ruin of the 
people itself and of Italian patriotism! Charlemagne felt that his work 
could not last. The partition of his States between his sons goes to show- 
that, in his own estimation, the empire lacked real unity, and already the 



The Mohammedan and CaroHngian Eras 213 

appearance of the Norse pirates gave presage of the misfortunes that were 
to follow. 

The Empire's Weakness— Louis the Pious.— We have seen in 
process of forniation, during the seventh and eighth centuries, two immense 
empires alongside and at the expense of the Roman empire. In the ninth the 
old continent undergoes a change, and, instead of the great combinations 
previously covering the surface of Europe, Asia and Africa, we find only 
grains of sand. With slight shades of difference, the Gallo-Romans and the 
Italians spoke one and the same language, an offspring of Latin, while the 
Germans retained the Teutonic idiom. To the Lombards and the Saxon 
Charlemagne left their own laws; and the Salians, the Ripuarians, the Ala- 
mans and the Bavarians had retained theirs. These peoples, then, were 
only mingled and welded together; a single bond kept them united in a 
bunch, and that was Charlemagne's will and the administration which he had 
given them in common. After his death the efforts of the tributaries to free 
themselves, and the attacks of neighbors, Norsemen, Slavs and Bretons, to 
renew the invasion, showed that the entire prestige of the new empire de- 
pended on its founder. In the last place, the many divisions made between 
the Debonnaire's sons and grandsons bore witness not only to the ambition of 
those princes, but also to the tendency of the various peoples to separate from 
one another. The first of these partitions took place in 817. It created 
two subordinate kingdoms, the one Aquitaine, the other Bavaria, for Pepin 
and Louis, the emperor's second and third sons. The eldest, Lothair, was 
associated in the empire. Pepin and Louis could not, without being author- 
ized, wage war or sign a treaty. Bernard, king of Italy, a nephew of the 
emperor, revolted against this partition. Conquered and captured, he 
had his eyes put out, and died in consequence. His kingdom was given to 
Lothair. Louis had taken as his second wife the beautiful and learned 
Judith, daughter of a Bavarian chief, who presented him with a son, Charles, 
and from that time wielded considerable influence over him. In 829 she 
demanded from her husband a share for this child, and Louis carved out a 
kmgdom for him, made up of Alamania, Rhcetia, a portion of Burgundy, 
Provence and Gothia (Septimania and the Spanish March). Lothair, 
Pepm of Aquitaine and Louis of Bavaria, who felt hurt at this new partition, 
took up arms against their father, made him prisoner, and restored the 
arrangement of 817. But the victors did not agree among themselves, and 
the Debonnaire, whom his eldest son wished to seclude in a cloister, was 
extricated from the difficulty by the others. In S^^ there was a fresh revolt, 
supported by Pope Gregory IV, who went to France as defender of the 
partition of 8 1 7. Louis's army and that of his sons having come face to face 



.tH The Mohammedan and Carolingian Eras 

m the plain of Rothfeld in Alsace, the emperor's soldiers abandoned him. 
He was banished to the St. Medard monastery of Soissons, declared by the 
bishops to have forfeited the throne, stripped of his military insignia and 
clad in the garb of a penitent. Restored once more the following year, in 
839 he made a last partition decidedly to the advantage of his youngest son 
Charles the Bald. The others had already taken up arms when he died 
(840). 

Battle of Fontanet and Treaty of Verdun. — These disgraceful wars 
were due not only to the Debonnaire's incapacity, but also to his younger 
sons' desire not to recognize the superior authority of their eldest brother, 
who was claiming the imperial prerogatives for himself, while the peoples 
did not want him. Accordingly war was renewed when Lothair, succeeding 
Louis as emperor, called for direct oath from the free men even in his broth- 
ers' States. Charles the Bald united with Louis the Germanic, his former 
adversary, in repelling this pretension. After vain efforts at settlement, a 
great battle was fought at Fontanet, near Auxerre (841). Except the 
Basques, the Goths of Septimania and the Bretons, all the peoples of the 
C^arolingian empire took part in this great encounter. Lothair had with 
him Italians, Aquitanians and Austrasians; Louis, Germans; Charles, 
Neustrians and Burgundians. It is said that forty thousand men perished 
\in Lothair's side. He was defeated, but refused to accept that judgment 
of God. So as to make him yield, the two victors renewed their alliance 
v/ith an oath which Louis the Germanic took in the romance tongue in the 
presence of Charles the Bald's soldiers, and Charles in the Tudesque tongue 
in the presence of Louis (842). These two oaths are the oldest monuments 
that have come down to us of the French and German languages. Lothair 
yielded, and the treaty of Verdun (843) divided the Carolingian empire 
into three parts. Lothair had, along with the title of emperor, Italy as far 
as the northern boundary of the duchy of Beneventum, and the lands along 
the left bank of the Rhine from the Alps to the North Sea, a narrow strip 
of territory separating the States of his two brothers. All to the west of 
this Lotharlngia remained to Charles the Bald, and all east of it to Louis 
the Germanic. In this partition, far different from any the Merovingians 
had made, we see the first demarcations of two modern nations, France and 
Germany. Lothair's share was only ephemeral. The other two were 
afterwards to grow by taking its fragments. But the treaty deeply grieved 
the advocates of unity, which they saw vanish for ever. 

Charles theBald and Feudalism. — This prince did not possess even 
all of Gaul that was left to him. Nomenoe, and then his son, Herispoe, 



The Mohammedan and CaroHngian Eras 215 

compelled him to acknowledge them as kings of the Bretons; Bernard's son, 
William, defeated his army, which had attacked Septimania. Inconstant 
Aquitaine, of which he wished to make his son king, acknowledged Pepin II 
and submitted only later on. The real masters of the country were the three 
Bernards, the Marquises of Toulouse, Gothia and Auvergne. Upon 
Lothair's death (855), his States were divided between his three sons. To 
Louis II fell Italy and the imperial title, to Charles the country between the 
Alps and the Rhone under the name of Provence, and to Lothair II, under 
the name of Lotharingia, the country between the Meuse and the Rhine. 
All three dying childless, Charles the Bald tried to divide their heritage 
between himself and Louis the Germanic; and, as the latter preceded him 
to the tomb, he wished also to seize Germany and restore Charlemagne's 
empire. That prince, who was heaping so many crowns on his head, did 
not know how to defend either his cities against the Northmen or his author- 
ity against the great nobles. 

The owners of benefices, or lands granted temporarily, and the royal 
officials (dukes, counts and judges), from a tendency which Charlemagne had 
already had to combat, were usurping heredity for their offices and their 
lands. Charles sanctioned this usurpation (877) by the capitularyof Kiersy- 
sur-Oise, and he allowed mere free men who were possessors of fee simple 
tenures to make application for protection to the great holders of benefices. 
At the same time immunities, or exemptions from taxes and the king's 
justice, were multiplied, so that the royal authority was no longer recognized 
either by the powerful or by the weak. These disorders favored the North- 
men who were landing on the shores of France, ascending the rivers and 
devastating the cities, but especially the churches. In 845 they pillaged 
the abbey of St. Germain des Pres, then just outside the walls of Paris, 
and in 857 they led captive the abbot of St. Denis. In 856 they were at 
Orleans, and in 864 at Toulouse. Charles the Bald knew no better than to 
give them gold to get them to depart, but this v/as the surest way of inducing 
them to return. They met with stubborn resistance only from one man, 
Robert the Strong, to whom Charles had given (861) the country between the 
Seine and the Loire, under the name of Duchy of France. This Robert, the 
ancestor of the Capetians, defeated the invaders on several occasions, and 
perished fighting them (866). 

The Last Carolingians. — Louis II the Stammerer (877) continued 
his father's wretched reign. His two sons, Louis III and Carloman (879), it 
is true, defeated the Northmen; but these victors could not keep Boso from 
assuming the title of king of Aries and Provence, nor from having himself 
crowned in an assembly of bishops. They died without issue, and the crown 



2i6 The Mohammedan and CaroHngian Eras 

was offered to Charles the Fat, who had become ruler of all Germany and 
acquired the title of emperor. Charlemagne's empire was momentarily 
reconstituted (884). But it was now only the shadow of greatness; the 
emperor was not even in a state to repel the Northmen who were besieging 
Paris; Eudes, reputed to be a son of Robert the Strong, saved that city. 
Indignant at the Carolingian's cowardice, the Germans deposed him at the 
diet of Tribur (887) and seven kingdoms were formed out of the ruins of the 
empire, namely, Italy, Germany, Lorraine, France, Navarre, Cisjuran 
Burgundy or Provence, and Transjuran Burgundy; nine, if we add those of 
Brittany and Aquitaine, which existed in fact, if not legally. The imperial 
crown remained with Italy, where petty sovereigns disputed with one another 
for it. 

In France, it was to the brave Count Eudes the crown was given. 
Many lords, especially in the south, refused to acknowledge him, and in the 
north he found a competitor in a post humous son of Louis the Stammerer, 
Charles III, called the Simple, who was proclaimed at an assembly held at 
Rheims and whose protector the king of Germany, Arnulf, the illegitimate 
son of a CaroHngian, declared himself. Eudes gained the upper hand, but 
his premature death (898) made his title pass to Charles the Simple. Under 
this prince the invasions of the Northmen ceased because, after having so 
long taken booty, they took the country itself. A treaty ceded to RoUo, their 
most terrible chief, the country between the Andelle and the ocean, with 
the hand of the king's daughter and the title of duke, on condition that 
he would do homage and become a Christian (911). Neustria, thereafter 
called Normandy, under this active prince's rule attained to great prosperity. 
Charles, whose surname indicates weakness, let himself be deposed in 922 
by the great nobles, who elected in his stead Robert, duke of France, and 
then his son-in-law, Raoul, duke of Burgundy (923); and he died a captive 
in the tower of Peronne. In 936 a CaroHngian king reappears. Hugh the 
Great duke of France, set upon the throne Louis IV d'Outre-mer (from be- 
yond sea), then deposed him, restored him, and deposed him again. In vain 
did Louis ask the emperor for aid; he died without having succeeded in 
recovering a mere shadow of authority. His son Lothair followed him 
(954), but was reduced to possession of the single city of Laon; and so he 
held his ground only by form.ing a close alliance with Hugh Capet, the new 
duke of France. On his deathbed he felt so clearly there was no strength 
but in the house of France that he entreated Hugh to protect his son, Louis 
V. The latter reigned indeed, but only for a year, and Hugh Capet, at 
last deciding to assume that crown which his father would not have, had 
himself proclaimed king in an assembly o^ the chief bishops and barons of the 
north of France (987). 



CHAPTER XIV 



The Northmen and Feudalism 



The Northmen in France. — A powerful cause of the dissolution of 
the Carolingian domination was the invasion that assailed the second 
empire of the west, four centuries after the Germans had ruined the first. 
The movement started from three points, north, south and east, and ex- 
tended westward, so as to envelop the whole empire. The Northmen 
were the first to appear. 

When the Franks, turning backwards, after having reached the west- 
ern Hmits of Gaul, drove from the west towards the east the waves of men 
that had rushed in on the Roman provinces, and undertook to subdue 
Thuringia and Alamania, Bavaria and Saxony, many warriors withdrew 
towards the north into the Cimbric and Scandinavian peninsulas, where 
peoples of their own blood dwelt. Kept in check by the military organi- 
zation which Charlemagne had given to his eastern frontier, and by the 
Slavs who held the country of the Oder, the men of the north saw before 
them only the sea open to them, and they set out on the Swans' highway. 
Its storms were familiar to them. Accordingly the Vikings or Children 
of the Fiords dreaded no peril. "The hurricane," they said, "carries 
us whither we wish." And they went along the coasts to the estuaries 
of the rivers, pillaging and slaying, then settled at some favorable point, 
and thence overran the country, singing the lances' chant to the popula- 
tions. Thus did they occupy the islands of Walcheren at the mouths 
of the Scheldt, Betau between the Rhine, the Wahal and the Lech, Oyssel 
in the Seine, and Noirmoutiers at the entrance to the Loire. In 840 they 
burned Rouen, in 843 they pillaged Nantes, Saintes, Bordeaux, and pene- 
trated into the Mediterranean. On several occasions they sacked the 
environs of Paris, which sustained a memorable siege against them (885), 
then Tours, Orleans, and even Toulouse. In 851 they ascended the 
Rhine and the Meuse and devastated the bordering lands. But a royal 
edict ordered the king's counts and vassals to repair the old castles and 
build new ones. The country was soon covered with these structures 

and the invaders, halted at every step, thought of settling in some safe 

217 



2i8 The Northmen and Feudalism 

fertile place rather than traverse those routes that had become difficult. 
In 911, as we have seen, they had Neustria ceded to them. Their devas- 
tations, prolonged for three quarters of a century, had prepared the v^ay 
for the coming of feudalism. 

The Northmen in England, the Polar Regions and Russia— 

From France and the Netherlands they rested their safety along v^ith 
a part of their wealth; from England they took its independence in ad- 
dition. In 827 the Saxon heptarchy came to form but a single monarchy 
under Egbert, king ofWessex, who repelled the first Danes landing on his 
shores. After his death they occupied Northumberland, East Anglia 
and Mercia. Alfred the Great (871) arrested their progress and gave to 
his kingdom a regular organization that in its general characteristics has 
remained to the present day, such as the division of the land into counties, 
trial by jury, general business attended to in the Wittenagemote or as- 
sembly of the wise men, with the concurrence of a half hereditary half 
elective royalty. One of his successors, Athelstane, vanquished the Danes 
"on the day of the great fight" and rid England of them (937). But 
they soon appeared again, led by Olaf, king of Norway, and Sweyn or 
Sueno, king of Denmark, who carried off enormous ransoms. As gold 
did not succeed in keeping them away, Ethelred laid a vast plot. All 
the Danes who had settled in England were massacred on St. Brice's day 
(1002). Sweyn avenged his fellow-countrymen by driving out Ethelred, 
and assumed the title of king of England (1013). Edmund II Ironsides 
renewed a heroic but fruitless struggle against Knut, Sweyn's successor 
(1017), and the whole country acknowledged Danish domination. Knut, 
at first cruel, became conciHatory. By marrying Emma, Ethelred's widow, 
he prepared the way for the union of victors and vanquished. He pro- 
mulgated wise laws and put those of Alfred the Great in force; he saw to 
it that the Danes did not oppress the English; he sent two Saxon mission- 
aries to Scandinavia to hasten the fall of expiring paganism there, and in 
1027 made a pilgrimage to Rome, where he pledged himself, on behalf 
of all England, to pay every year a penny a family (St. Peter's pence). 
Thus, while the Northmen in France had taken only a province, those 
in England took a kingdom. Moreover, on both sides of the Channel 
these pillagers showed the same aptitude for civilization and these fierce 
pagans became excellent Christians. Rollo in Normandy was a strict 
judge, and Knut won the surname of Great. 

The majority of these bold adventurers went towards the south, where 
they found wine and gold. Others penetrated into the Baltic as far as the 
head of the Gulf of Finland, or went up beyond the North Cape for the 



The Northmen and Feudalism 219 

mere pleasure of seeing the unknown and doing the impossible. In 86 1 
they reached the Faroe Islands, Iceland about 870, and a century later 
Greenland, whence they went to Labrador and Vinland (the Massachu- 
setts and Rhode Island coast). They were, in America, then, and they 
were nearly five centuries before Columbus. Their banished men, Waregs 
(Varangians), at the same time penetrated by way of the Baltic into the 
heart of the Slavs and sold their services to the powerful city of Novgorod, 
which Rurik, their chief, subdued (862). He took the title of Grand Prince 
and began the State v/hich has become the Russian empire. As the Arabs 
going out west and east from their sun-burned peninsula had spread from 
the Indus to the Pyrenees, but did not leave the southern regions, so the 
Northmen emerging from their barren peninsulas had reached America 
and the Volga while remaining in the regions of the North. The former 
had had in certain respects an original civilization because they had a 
special religion, while the latter, captured by Christianity, were not dis- 
tinguished from the other Christian nations. 

Ravages by Saracens and Hungarians. — The Saracens with whom 
we are now concerned were Arabs settled in Africa who, leaving their 
brethern to conquer provinces, took the sea as their domain and ravaged 
all the coasts of the western Mediterranean. Tunis or the old Cartha- 
ginian province was the place from which they set out. In 831 they sub- 
dued Sicily and then passed over to the Great Land, as they called Italy. 
They captured Brindisi, Bari and Tarentum, and often devastated south- 
ern Italy, even to the suburbs of Rome. Malta, Sardinia, Corsica, and the 
Balerics belonged to them. They made a settlement at Fraxinet in Pro- 
vence, which they held until about the close of the tenth century, and 
had posts in the defiles of the Alps for levying ransom on trade and pilgrims. 
Thence their raids and pillagings extended into the Rhone and Po valleys. 
It was a piracy bolder and more terrible than that organized in the six- 
teenth century by Khair Eddyn Barbarossa, which was not suppressed 
until France took Algiers in 1830. 

In the Danube valley, through which the Hungarians came, invasion 
had hardly ceased since the time of Attila. Waves of men had pressed up- 
on one another there as those of a sea driven by a storm move on incessant- 
ly. After the Hunns came the Slavs, who are there yet; then the Bulgar- 
ians, "the accursed of God," the Avars, whom Charlamagne exterminated, 
the Khazars, the Petchenegs, who have disappeared, and lastly a mingling 
of Hunnic and Ugrian tribes whom the Latins and Greeks called Hun- 
garians and who give themselves the name of Magyars. Called in by 
Arnulf, king of Germany, against the Slavs of Moravia, in a few years 



2 20 The Northmen and FeudaHsm 

they made conquest of the Theiss valley and of Pannonia. In 899 
they ravaged Carinthia and Friuli; the following year they hurled their 
bold cavaliers on both sides of the Alps into the valley of the Po, the 
upper Danube valley, and even beyond the Alsace, Lorraine and Bur- 
gundy were devastated. The hordes of the third invasion, Northmen, 
Saracens and Hungarians, seemed to make central France their goal, 
and it is the last who have left the most terrible memory there, for from 
Ugrian is derived the word ogre. Germany at last made great efforts 
to get rid of these invaders. Henry the Fowler won over them the 
victory of Merseburg (934), and his son, Otho I, slew, it is said, a hundred 
thousand of them in the battle of Augsburg (955). This disaster threw 
them back into the country which they have since held. The devastating 
raids of the Magyars had the same result as those of the Northmen. In 
Italy the cities, in order to resist them, surrounded themselves with walls, 
as the rural districts in France had bristled with castles, and they reorganized 
their militia, which enabled them to regain their municipal independence. 
One of the two great German States, Austria, was at first a margravate of 
military outposts against the Hungarians; and the margravate of Branden- 
burg, with which the greatness of the house of Hohenzollern originated, 
played the same part against the Slavs. By these two great lines of for- 
tresses that march of Eastern peoples to the west, which had begun in the 
very early ages of the world, was stopped. The Mongols in the thirteenth 
and the Turks in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries encroached only on 
the Slavic world and were to be stopped on the frontiers of the Germanic race. 

Feudalism, or Heredity of Offices and Benefice. — A consequence of 
the invasions of the ninth century was the founding of new dominations in 
Russia, Normandy, England and Pannonia, all around the old world; and in 
that old world invasion had, by its pillagings, disturbed the States founded 
by the Germans, favored confusion, and hastened the progress of feudal 
anarchy, if we include in the definition of feudalism the idea which etymology 
gives to it, namely, absence of a central power. We have seen the empire 
divided into kingdoms, and the kingdoms themselves are to be dissolved into 
lordships — the great political masses are falling into dust. How were the 
lordships formed .? Under the last Carolingians the king's officers, having 
usurped, at every step of the ladder of administration, heredity of their public 
office or trust, duchy, county, etc., at the same time as that of their benefice 
or grant of land, there was formed a hierarchy of sovereign proprietors, 
but imperfect sovereigns, for there was no land that was not a fief, no lord 
who was not a vassal acknowledging a suzerain; and then unequal sovereigns, 
from the very fact of the hierarchy. Besides, the concessions of immunity 



The Northmen and FeudaHsm 221 

had turned over to these proprietors the pubHc taxes and royal justice; 
so that the king had no longer lands or money, or rights, or power of enforcing 
law. This regime is called Feudalism. The first royal act constituting 
it was the edict of Kiersy-sur-Oise (877), by which Charles the Bald acknowl- 
edged the son to have the right to inherit his father's benefice or county. 

A man became another's vassal by the ceremony of homage and fealty, 
that is, he declared himself his new lord's man, swore fidelity to him, and 
the lord granted him the fief by investiture or seizin, often accompanied 
with a symbol, a clod of earth, a stone, a stick, etc. To say nothing of the 
vassal's moral obligations to his lord, such as defending him, respecting his 
honor and causing it to be respected, aiding him with his good advice, etc., 
the material obligations, the services due by him were: I, Military service, 
a fundamental principle of that society, which knew nothing of paid standing 
armies. The number of men to be furnished at the lord's requisition and 
the duration of service varied according to the fief — here sixty days, there 
forty, elsewhere twenty. 2, Fiance (trust), or the obligation of serving 
the suzerain in his court of justice, of attending his pleas. 3, Aids, some 
legal and obligatory, others by way of favor and voluntary. The legal aids 
were due generally in three cases— when the lord was a prisoner and it 
was necessary to pay his ransom, when he invested his eldest son as a knight, 
and when he gave his eldest daughter in marriage. The aids took the 
place of public taxes. To these services must be added certain feudal rights, 
such as relief, escheat, confiscation, protection, marriage, etc. These 
services being rendered, the vassal gradually became master in his fief. 
He could infeodate all or a part of it to vassals of a lower rank, called vava- 
sours. 

Duties and Privileges of the Suzerain. — ^The suzerain had also his 
obligations. He could not withdraw his fief from a vassal arbitrarily and 
without a lawful motive; he had to defend him if he was attacked; to do him 
full justice, etc. Judgment by one's peers was the principle of feudal justice. 
The vassals of one and the same suzerain were peers among themselves. 
If the lord refused to render justice to his vassal or rendered it imperfectly, 
the latter could appeal by default of right to the next higher suzerain. If 
need be, he even used the right of private war, a right of which the lords 
were very jealous, and which made feudalism a regime of violence wholh' 
contrary to every peaceful development of human society, to commerr^. 
to agriculture, to industry. It was the same principle that led to being 
admitted into procedure the judicial combat in a ring (enclosed field). 
The Truce of God, which prohibited private wars from Wednesday evening 
until Monday morning, was an effort on the part of the Church to restra 
violence, which could not be completely abolished (1041). 



123 



The Northmen and FeudaHsm 



Justice did not appertain to all the barons in the same degree. In 
France distinction was made between three grades of it — higher, lower, 
and middle. The first alone gave the right of life and death. Generally 
it was the greatest fiefs that had the largest jurisdiction. Among the baronial 
rights must be noted that of coining money. At the accession of Hugh 
Capet there were no less than five hundred lords exercising it. Besides, 
within the extent of their fief they made the law. The capitularies of Charles 
the Bald are the last manifestation of law-enacting royal power. From 
that time until Philip Augustus there were no more general laws in France, 
but only local customs. Even the clergy themselves had adopted this system. 
The bishop, formerly defender of the city, had often become its count, which 
made him the suzerain of all the lords of his diocese. Moreover, the bishop 
or the abbot had received, in donations made to his church or his monastery 
large estates which he infeodated; and this ecclesiastical feudalism was 
so powerful in France, and in England after the Norman conquest, that it 
owned over a fifth, and in Germany almost a third, of all the land. 

Feudal Condition of the Subordinate Classes. — Below the warrior 
social stratum of the lords was the toiling stratum of vileins and serfs, of 
"men of might" {gens potestatis). The free men had disappeared. The 
vileins and serfs cultivated the soil for the lord, within the shadow of the 
feudal keep around which they grouped and which sometimes defended them 
but often oppressed them. The vilein was subjected only to fixed dues, like 
a farmer, and to the least severe task works; he could not be detached from 
the land that had been assigned to him to cultivate, and had the right to 
possess in his own name; as for the serfs, "the lord," says Pierre de Fon- 
taines, "can take everything they have and keep their bodies in prison as 
long as he pleases, whether wrongly or rightly, and he is not bound to answer 
for this to anyone, except God." In spite of that, the condition of the serf 
was better than that of the slave in antiquity. He was regarded as a man; 
he had a family, and the Church, which called him a son of Adam, made 
him, at least before God, the equal of the proudest lords. In short, the 
surrender of every right to the lord was the principle of feudal society. 
As royalty no longer filled the office for which it had been instituted, men 
asked of the bishops, the counts, the barons, of all in power, in fact, the 
protection which they could no longer expect from the law or from the 
nominal head of the State. But this protection was the sword that gave it; 
whence those interminable wars which broke out at all points of feudal 
Europe and which were the great calamity of that epoch, on account of their 
inevitable consequences, murder and pillage. 

General Character of Feudalism. — Occasionally, however, men vaunt 



The Northmen and Feudalism 223 

that time which was so hard on the poor. It is agreed that commerce and 
industry had fallen very low; that social life seemed to have returned to its 
elemental conditions; that there were many acts of violence, little security, 
a wretched intellectual condition, and, in spite of the teachings of the Church, 
more brutal passions than in our age and probably as many vices. But, 
some may say, the serf of the land was happier than is the serf of modern 
industry. If he had but a meagre pittance, at least competition did not 
rob him of it. Except as to the chances of private wars and acts of brigan- 
dage, he was better assured of his morrow than are our workingmen. His 
needs were limited, as were also his desires; he lived and died in the shadow 
of his church tower, full of faith and resignation. All this is true. But the 
Indian is happy also on the prairies of the Far West, as long as the buffalo 
does not fail him on his hunting ground and the Great Spirit keeps away 
from him the smallpox and the Yankee. But nature has not made man the 
plant that vegetates in the recess of a wood or the animal guided merely by 
its appetites. It has given him faculties, and imposes on him the duty of 
putting them into action so as to increase in him from day to day the forces 
constituting human dignity. This is the price of life, and, at the risk of 
many sufferings, we should tend towards the ideal which God has proposed 
to us, and dwell no more on the secondary question of happiness than the 
soldier ordered to make an assault dwells on the idea of all the good things 
he exposes himself to losing in exchange for duty performed. In the Middle 
Ages mankind contained in its ranks vast multitudes with really few men 
among them, and it is but proper to think that it is the Creator's pleasure to 
see moral creation continued by the expansion of intellect on earth, as 
material creation is perfected in the two organic kingdoms by the develop- 
ment of the functions or of instinct. 

In some respects the mediaeval period was behind antiquity, which is 
not to be wondered at, as a new life was begun with the barbarian invasion 
but in some others it was in advance. It brought hardships to many; but 
in the monasteries it opened so many asylums. Under the happy influence 
of Christianity the family was reconstituted and, from the necessity of 
counting only on oneself, the soul was reinvigorated. Those fighters regained 
feelings of courage and honor which the Romans of the decadence no longer 
knew, and, if the State was badly organized, there existed for the vassal 
strong maxims of right which, in spite of a myriad of violations, have come 
down to us. Taxes could be demanded only after the taxable had con- 
sented; no law was effective until accepted by those who were to owe it 
obedience; no sentence was valid unless rendered by the peers of the accused. 
In the last place, amid that society which knew only the rights of blood, 
the Church by election upheld those of intellect; and, with her God dying 



2 24 The Northmen and FeudaHsm 

on a cross, with her doctrine of humane quahty in the presence of Divine 
justice, to the great inequalities of earth she was a threat that would become 
a reality when the principle of religious law would pass into the civil law. 

The Great Fiefs of France. — ^The feudal organization, which was 
completed only at the close of the eleventh century, prevailed in all the prov- 
inces of the old Carolingian empire. But great names survived, such as 
Germany, France, Italy; and great titles were borne by those who are called 
the kings of these countries — parade, and not real, kings, mere symbols of the 
territorial unity that had disappeared, and not serious, active, powerful heads 
of nations. Of these three royalties, one disappeared early, in 924; another, 
that of France, fell very low; and the third, the crown of Germany, for 
two centuries shed a bright light, after Otho I had revived Charlemagne's 
empire, with less grandeur to be sure, for the copy shrinks in proportion 
as it is removed from the model. As Pepin's son had reigned over fewer 
peoples than Constantine and Theodosius, so the Othos, the Henrys and 
the Fredericks reigned over a smaller territory than Charlemagne, and their 
authority was less undisputed. 

The king of France possessed the duchy of France, which had become 
royal domain. All around, between the Loire, the ocean, the Scheldt, the 
upper Meuse and the Seine, there lay under his suzerainty vast principalities 
whose possessors rivaled him in wealth and power — the county of Flanders, 
from the Scheldt to Therouanne; the duchy of Normandy, reaching from the 
Bresle to the Couesnon, and pretending to extend its suzerainty over the 
county of Brittany; the county of Anjou; the duchy of Burgundy; and the 
county of Champagne. Between the Loire and the Pyrenees the former 
kingdom of Aquitaine was divided into four dominant fiefs — in the north 
the duchy of Aquitaine belonged to the powerful counts of Poitiers since 845; 
in the southwest the duchy of Gascony,between the Garonne and the Pyrenees, 
the county of Toulouse; and lastly the county of Barcelona, south and north 
of the eastern Pyrenees, These great feudatories, immediate vassals of the 
crown, were called king's peers; and to these had been added six ecclesiastical 
peers, namely, the duke-archbishop of Rheims, the two duke-bishops of 
Laon and Langres, and the three count-bishops of Beauvais, Chalons and 
Nayon. Among the sub-fiefs next in order there were no less than one 
hundred counties, and a much larger number of viscounties, lordships, county- 
bishoprics, lordship-abbeys, etc. 

Great Fiefs of Other Countries. — ^The boundaries of the kingdom of 
Germany properly so called were: On the west, the Meuse and the Scheldt; 
on the northwest, the North Sea; on the north, tlie Eyder, the Baltic and the 



The Northmen and Feudalism 225 

little kingdom of Slavonia; on the east, the Oder, the kingdom of Poland and 
that of Hungary; and on the south, the Alps. There were nine great 
territorial divisions there, namely, the vast duchy of Saxony, from the Oder 
to within a short distance of the Rhine; Thuringia, southeast of Saxony; 
Bohemia and Moravia, subject to one and the same hereditary duke, who 
had acknowledged the suzerainty of the empire; the duchy of Bavaria, 
between the Lech and Presburg; the duchy of Carinthia, on the upper Drave 
and Save. Alamania or Suabia, the southwestern division; Franconia, 
between Suabia and Saxony, the Rhine and Thuringia; Lorraine, west of 
Franconia and Saxony as far as the Meuse and the Scheldt; and lastly 
Friesland, on the shores of the North Sea. The kingdom of Aries comprised 
the three valleys of the Saone, the Rhone and the Aar; that of Italy, the Po, 
basin or Lombardy, with its great republics of Milan and Pavia, Venice and 
Genoa; the duchy or marquisate of Tuscany; the States of the Church; 
and the four Norman States of the principality of Capua and Aversa, the 
duchy of Apulia and Calabria, the principality of Taranto, and the grand 
county of Sicily. 

In Christian Spain we find : In the centre the kingdom of Castile and 
, Leon; in the west the county of Portugal, depending on the crown of Castile; 
in the north and northeast the kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon. In Great 
Britain were the kingdoms of England and Scotland, and the principality 
of Wales; between the North Sea and the Baltic, the three Scandinavian 
States of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; among the Slavs, the kingdoms of 
Slavonia on the Baltic and of Poland on the Vistula, the grand duchy of Rus- 
sia divided into a multitude of principalities, and that of Lithuania. In the 
year looo Pope Sylvester II sent the royal crown to St. Stephen, who had just 
converted the Hungarians, and it would soon be necessary for Christian 
Europe to go to the aid of the Eastern empire, which had lost Africa and 
Egypt to the Arabs, and Syria and more than half of Asia Minor, where the 
Seljukian Turks were encamped. 

Civilization from the Ninth to the Twelfth Centuries. — The revival 
of letters under Charlemagne had not been continued after him. The great 
bishop of Rheims, Hincmar, the monk Gottschalk, an advocate of predestina- 
tion, and his adversary, John Scotus Erigena (from Erin), again stirred up 
great questions, but after them there was almost complete silence, and gloom 
covered the tenth century. Physical wretchedness was extreme, as was also 
moral misery, and so many ills had fallen on the world that many believed 
it would come to an end in the year lOO. Little building was done for a 
future so brief, and even some edifices were let fall into ruins. The fateful 
moment having passed, however, men again began to hope and to live; human 

15 



2 26 The Northmen and Feudalism 

activity put on new life; many churches were built, and Sylvester II spoke 
to Europe the first words about the Crusade that was soon to put the world 
in motion once more. There was then a literary revival more powerful 
than under Charlemagne. The common tongues were already taking hold, 
as regards certain works of the mind, side by side with the ecclesiastical, 
learned and universal language, Latin. The latter continued to be used in 
the monasteries, which were becoming extremely numerous, and it was the 
servant of theology and the grave discussions that were beginning to be 
noised abroad. Lanfranc, who was abbot of Bee in Normandy, and then 
archbishop of Canterbury, and St. Anselm, his successor, who wrote the 
famous treatise called the " Monologium," gave vigorous life to the movement 
of ideas, and the eleventh century was not completed when there broke out 
the great quarrel between the realists and the nominalists in which Abelard 
took so prominent a part. 

The Beginnings of Popular Literature. — ^The vulgar tongues, as 
numerous as the newly formed nations, were: In Germany, the Scandinavian 
States and England, the Tudesque idioms (language of ia), which were 
beginning only to the west of the Meuse: In Italy Italian (language of 5i), 
destined to attain its perfection before the others; in France the Romance, 
which was already divided into Romance of the North, Welch or Walloon 
(language of oil), and Romance of the South or Provencal (language of oc) 
which was also spoken in the Ebro valley. The first literary use of Romance 
was made by the poets of the time, trouveres in the north, troubadours in the 
south, and jesters (jongleurs). The trouvere and the troubadour invented 
and composed the poem; the jester {joculator) recited it; but sometimes the 
same man performed both parts. They wandered from castle to castle, 
relieving the tedium of the manor with their chants. The trouveres generally 
composed songs celebrating exploits {chansons de geste), in twenty, thirty 
or even fifty thousand verses, and the subjects they treated formed several 
cycles, according to epochs — first, the Carolingian cycle, whose heroes were 
Charlemagne and his twelve peers (Song of Roland, Romance of the 
Loherains, etc.), then the Armorican cycle, devoted to King Arthur, defender 
of British independence, of which Robert Wace has remained the chief poet 
with his romance of the Brut (1155), which narrates the exploits of the 
Knights of the Round Table; to the third cycle belong all the old subjects 
that have a place in popular poetry, as though there was then a remote 
and confused presentiment of the Renaissance. The exploit songs are the 
poetry of feudalism, and yet also of chivalry, which had come in its train. 

The nobles took pleasure in gathering their vassals around them; and 
to some they confided honorary services, such as that of constable, marshal. 



The Northmen and FeudaHsm 227 

seneschal, chamberlain, butler, etc. The vassal brought his sons to the 
suzerain's court, where, as pages and equerries, they prepared themselves to 
be made knights. They became such by a ceremony at one and the same 
time religious (fasting for twenty-four hours, keeping vigil in arms, symboli- 
cal baths, etc. and military, embrace, spurs, sword, etc.) To pray, to 
avoid sin, to defend the Church, the widow and the orphan, to protect the 
people, to wage war faithfully, to fight for his lady love, to love his lord, 
and to heed good advice, were the duties of the knight. That new and 
original society which produced scholasticism, the common languages, 
feudalism and chivalry, made innovation in art. For Roman architecture, 
also called Byzantine, Lombard, Saxon, etc., (full arch supported by 
columns), there was substituted the ogival architecture, improperly called 
Gothic. The ogive, an elementary process easier than the arch, is of all 
times and of all countries, but in the twelfth century it began to be used 
profusely, and it became the essential element of a new style, of imposing 
grandeur. 

Old and New D5masties in Germany. — ^While France was making 
kings of its indigenous lords, Eudes, Robert, Raoul and Hugh Capet, 
Germany, after the deposition of Charles the Fat (887), elected Arnulf, a 
descendant of Charlemagne, the illegitimate son of Carloman. As heir to 
the Carolingian pretensions, he received the homage of the kings of France, 
Transjuran Burgundy, Aries and Italy, and, the last named having called 
him in against a competitor, he had himself crowned king of Italy and 
emperor, which gave him nothing but a title more (896). He drove back 
some bands of Northmen, and against the Moravians set the Hungarians, 
who were beginning to make through Europe raids as devastating as those 
of the pirates from the North. With his son, Louis the Child, the German 
branch of the Carolingians became extinct, and as, by reason of the absence 
of natural heirs, Germany was called upon to choose kings from different 
families, election again came into the political morals of that country 
just when French royalty was becoming hereditary in accordance with 
the law of fiefs. From this the result was a different fate for the two royal- 
ties. Under Conrad I of Franconia, elected in 911, there began that 
struggle, which filled the whole German Middle Ages, of the great feuda- 
tories against the emperor. He wished to weaken Saxony, the rival of 
Franconia, and to detach Thuringia from it. He was defeated at Ehres- 
burg by Duke Henry, but gained the advantage over the duke of Lorraine, 
from whom he took Alsace, and over the administrators of Suabia, whom 
he had beheaded. After him the crown fell to the house of Saxony, with 
which it remained for over a hundred years. Conrad when dying had 



228 The Northmen and FeudaHsm 

designated his former conqueror as the most capable of defending Germany 
against the Hungarians, and Duke Henry was elected. 

The Saxon Kings. — ^The new king organized Germany, in which he 
found disorder rampant and barriers lacking. He is credited with having 
instituted, to the advantage of the royal authority, the counts palatine, 
placed in the provinces side by side with the dukes, and entrusted with the 
inspection of crown property. This was a sort of revival of Charlemagne's 
missi dominici. In 926 he restored the heerbann (heribann, militia), and 
obliged every man who had passed his sixteenth year to bear arms. He 
founded the marches of Schleswig, northern Saxony and Misnia, which 
were organized in military fashion, and the fortified places (burgwarten) 
of Quedlinburg, Meissen and Merseburg. The great victory won by him 
near the latter city (934) announced the approaching end of the ravages of 
the Hungarians, whom his son, Otto I the Great stopped for good by the 
decisive victory of Augsburg (955), which obliged that people to settle 
in the country which it still inhabits. The dukes of Bavaria and Franconia, 
supported by Louis IV, king of France, had revolted; Otho defeated the 
rebels and penetrated into France as far as Paris. But the most important 
fact of his reign is the restoration of the empire. Amid the anarchy of 
which Italy had been the scene for a century, the imperial crown, disputed 
by the petty sovereigns of the peninsula, and then for a short time seized 
by Arnaulf, had fallen (924) from the head of Berengarius I, who had been 
assassinated, and no one, amid that disorder, had picked it up. Called 
in by the last king's widow against the marquis of Ivrea, who wished to 
compel her to marry his son so as to give the appearance of legality to a 
usurpation, Otho took for himself the queen in marriage, had himself 
proclaimed at Milan as king of Italy, and crowned emperor at Rome 
(February 2, 962). He pledged himself to uphold the donations made to 
the Holy See by Charlemagne, and the Romans promised to elect a Pope 
only in the presence of the emperor's envoys. By one and the same stroke 
he restored the empire to the advantage of the kings of Germany and founded 
German domination in Italy, to Italy's subsequent great sorrow. The 
southern part of the peninsula was not yet his, as it still belonged to the 
Greeks. In order to win it without fighting, he asked of the emperor of 
Constantinople the hand of the princess Theophania for his son Otho, 
and obtained it. He then held a large place in Europe, which his successors, 
Otho II, Otho III and Henry II (973-1024), did not know how to retain. 
Under Otho III the tribune Crescentius tried to overthrow the Papal 
sovereignty so as to restore the Roman republic; and under Henry II Italy 
took to itself a national king for a very short time. 



The Northmen and Feudalism 229 

The House of Franconia — Hildebrand. — In 1024 the imperial crown 
passed from the house of Saxony, extinct in the male line, and returned to 
that of Franconia. Conrad II the Salic made the Lutizians tributary and 
Christian. He obliged the king of Poland to acknowledge him as suzerain, 
took the king of Bohemia prisoner, and added to the empire the two Burgun- 
dies, by virtue of an agreement signed with the aged king of Aries, an 
agreement to which German writers even now appeal to claim, in the name 
of the new Germanic empire, the valleys of the Saone and the Rhone. In 
Italy Conrad destroyed the great Italian feudalism by his edict of 1037, 
which declared the fiefs of the vassals, immediate and hereditary, constitut- 
ing a special feudalism in that country, to be devoid of the hierarchical 
development which it had elsewhere because, as all fiefs depended directly 
on the prince, the great feudatories were no longer an obligated interme- 
diary between the emperor and the petty vassals. His son, Henry III 
(1039), was of all the emperors the best assured of his authority both in 
Germany and in Italy. He compelled the king of Bohemia to pay him 
tribute, brought back to Alba Royal the king of Hungary, who had been 
enough to restore the ducal dignity in Bavaria, Suabia and Carinthia, so 
as to give to those provinces a government more capable of having the 
Truce of God observed. In Italy he controlled even the Papacy. 

It was a secular priest, and not a monk, as has been almost universally 
stated, the adviser of several Popes before being elected to fill the Holy See 
himself, who proposed to deliver the Papacy and Italy from German domina- 
tion. In 1059 Hildebrand prevailed upon Nicholas II to issue a decree 
ordering that the Popes be elected by the cardinal bishops and the cardinal 
priests of the Roman territory, that the rest of the clergy and the Roman 
people then give their assent, that the emperor retain the right of confirma- 
tion, and that, in the last place, the electors choose in preference a member 
of the Roman clergy. Another decree forbade clerics to receive from a 
layman the investiture of any ecclesiastical benefice. These decrees 
delivered the Pope from the dependence in which he was^ in regard to 
the emperor, and placed all the temporalities of the Church in the power 
of the enfranchised PontiflF. 

Gregory VII and Henry IV. — In 1073 Hildebrand was elected Pope, 
by acclamation of the people as well as by the cardinals, and took the name 
of Gregory VII. The new Supreme Pontiff was going to complete the work 
begun by the chief adviser of five successive Popes. His plans grew with 
his position. Charlemagne and Otho the Great had tried to subordinate 
the Papacy to the State, as the Greek emperors had done with the Eastern 
Church, and thereby sterilized it. But royalty as a central power had 



230 The Northmen and FeudaHsm 

declined throughout the whole of Europe by reason of the progress made by 
feudalism, that is, by the local powers, dukes, counts and barons. The 
clergy, on the contrary, had seen the faith of the peoples and their confidence 
in the Church increase largely in that same age. It seemed to the head of 
the Church that the moment had come to give back to those who had charge 
of the salvation of souls the influence necessary for giving the best direction 
to civil society, for repressing in it disorder of morals, violations of justice, 
and all the causes of perdition. That ambition was great and lawful 
in a priest, who should not be trammeled in his functions by interference 
from the State, as the State, on its part, should not permit the priest to 
interfere in its affairs beyond the correction of morals. Both should 
remember one of Christ's answers to the Pharisees: "Render unto Caesar 
the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." If 
the German emperor had observed this rule, and realized that the con- 
ferring of the emblems of spiritual jurisdiction was not in his province, 
that all that was due to him was fealty for the holding of temporal posses- 
sions, he would have avoided a bitter conflict and escaped humiliation. 

Gregory VII wished to do four things — to free the Papacy from German 
suzerainty, to reform the Church in morals and discipline, to make it every- 
where independent of the temporal powers in matters spiritual, and to make 
rulers as well as their subjects amenable to the moral law. The first point 
had been won by the decree of Nicholas II and the refusal to submit the 
election of the new Popes to imperial sanction; the second by the many 
acts of Gregory VII for the reformation of the clergy, including return to 
the old law of celibacy, and the destruction of simony; the third by lay 
princes being prohibited from investing bishops with their sacred insignia, 
and clerics from receiving such investiture; the fourth affected only immoral 
rulers, and was opposed by them, as was the third by the Franconian 
prince who was then at the head of the German State. It was on this point 
that the famous quarrel known as that about investitures took place be- 
tween the Papacy and the empire. 

During the minority of Henry IV all sorts of disorders had taken hold 
of the German clergy. As Gregory imputed them to unfit selection of 
prelates, he called upon Henry to abandon the conferring of ecclesiastical 
dignities and to appear in Rome to answer for his private misconduct. 
The emperor replied by issuing a decree of deposition against Gregory, 
formulated by twenty-four bishops assembled in synod at Worms (1076). 
The Pope answered with a bull excommunicating and deposing him. The 
Saxons and the Suabians, old enemies of the house of Franconia, carried out 
this sentence in the diet of Tribur, which suspended the emperor from his 
functions and threatened him with deposition if he did not become reconciled 



The Northmen and Feudalism 231 

with Rome. Henry yielded, but, as the event showed, only to gain time. 
He started for Italy while the Pope was on his way to Germany to settle 
Church matters there and had already gone as far as Canossa, where he 
was resting as the guest of his friend, the Countess Matilda of Tuscany. 
Henry sought an interview with the Pope at the castle, but the latter at first 
refused to meet him except in the presence of the assembled German barons 
and prelates. As the emperor kept up his entreaties for three days, bare- 
footed in the snow to show he was repentant, Gregory at last gave him an 
audience, received his submission, and absolved him; but when the Pope 
asked him to receive the Eucharist as a test of his sincerity, he refused, and 
left with vengeance in his heart. He prepared at once for war. The 
battle of 'Volksheim, in which his competitor, Rudolph of Suabia, was 
slain by Godfrey de Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine, the imperial standard 
bearer, made him master of Germany (1080). He could then return to 
Italy. The Countess Matilda was despoiled of part of her possessions, 
Rome was taken, and the emperor appointed a Pope of his own, the bishop 
of Ravenna, under the name of Clement III. Gregory himself would have 
fallen into the tyrant's hands had not the Normans, who had recently 
conquered southern Italy, delivered him. He died among them at Salerno 
(1085), his last words being: "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, 
therefore I die in exile." 

The Concordat of Worms. — Henry triumphed temporarily, but ere 
long he had to face another rebellion of his subjects at the head of which was 
his own son. He was defeated, deposed, exiled, and died miserably in utter 
destitution. That rebellious son, Henry V, continued the war against the 
Papacy for some years, but had at last to yield on the subject of investitures. 
The concordat of Worms (i 122) settled the dispute equitably by taking the 
spiritual investiture away from the emperor, to whom it left that for the 
temporalities. Had Henry IV heeded the behest of Gregory VII, the same 
conclusion would have been reached forty-five years earlier, much war 
would have been avoided, great reformation in morals and discipline 
effected, and his own repudiation and disgrace precluded. Henry V, 
besides bringing peace to the empire by his reconciliation with the Church, 
gathered in the rich inheritance of the Countess Matilda, the fiefs as head of 
the empire and the allodial lands as nearest of kin, though she had left to 
the See of Rome all the property she could dispose of by will. Thus was 
suppressed the most formidable feudal power in Italy. But with this king 
the house of Franconia became extinct (1125). In spite of his efforts to 
humble the great German power by the concession of direct dependence 
on the crown to a multitude of petty lordships and by the elevation of 



232 The Northmen and Feudalism 

many towns to the rank of imperial cities, this house had let powerful 
vassals remain untouched, especially the Welfs (Guelphs), dukes of Bavaria, 
and the Hohenstaufens, dukes of Suabia. Accordingly Lothair II (1125^ 
1 138) was very obsequious to these princes; and he was also very gracious 
to the Pope, who, when placing the imperial crown upon his head, conferred 
this honorary dignity as a benefice. 

The Hohenstaufens — Frederick Barbarossa. — The house of Suabia 
(Hohenstaufen) reached the throne with Conrad III (1138), who strength 
ened himself on it by destroying the power of the Welfs with the spoliation ol' 
Henry the Proud, duke of Saxony and of Bavaria. The unfortunate part 
which he took in the second Crusade, and his death soon after his return, 
kept him from completing his work. But his son, Frederick I Barbarossa 
(1152), once more asserted the imperial power in Italy, only, however, to 
meet with humiliation in the end. The edict of 1037 had indeed changed 
the aspect of the peninsula — there was now no great feudal power, only a 
mingling of petty lordships and cities organized as republics, having their 
senate (credenza), their consuls in varying numbers (twelve at Milan, six 
at Genoa, four at Florence), and their general assemblies (parliaments). 
This political regime won even Rome, from which Arnold of Brescia drove 
Pope Innocent II (1141). Frederick hastened to destroy this beginning 
of Italian independence, and gave Arnold over to the stake. But, by 
asserting his authority too em.phatically, he aroused the hostility of the 
republics and of the Pope himself, whom he had just restored. His despotic 
principles, proclaimed at the diet of Roncaglia (1158) by the civil lawyers 
of the Bologna school, gave the signal for alarm. Milan rose against its 
podestas; he razed it to the ground, and turned its ruins over to the neighbor- 
ing cities, its rivals (1162). Scarcely had he reached Germany again when 
the Lombard League was formed behind him. Pope Alexander III, the 
protagonist of Italian liberty, gave his adherence to it, and Frederick, who 
hastened to dissolve that coalition, was completely defeated at Legnano 
(11 76). Seven years later the treaty of Constance settled for good the 
quarrel between the empire and Italy, as the concordat of Worms had 
settled that between the empire and the Papacy. The cities retained the 
regalian rights which they had usurped — the rights of levying armies, of 
protecting themselves with fortifications, of exercising civil as well as 
criminal jurisdiction within their limits, and of confederating with one 
another. The emperor retained only the right of confirming, through 
his legates, their consuls and of appointing a judge of appeal in each of 
them for certain cases. Barbarossa had not been so unfortunate every- 
where. The kings of Denmark and Poland acknowledged his suzerainty; 




THE DREYFUS TRIAL IN FRANCE. 

Captain Alfred Dreyfus was twice convicted by the French military court 
of having sold army secrets to the Germans. In the progress of the trial 
all of France took sides for or against him, and the bitter partisan feeling 
threatened to disrupt the country. After suffering imprisonment for more than 
four years, he was retried, acquitted and restored to his rank in the army. 



The Northmen and FeudaHsm -233 

Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and of Bavaria, was robbed of his domains, 
and foreign ambassadors came to attend the pompous diets convened 
by the emperor, the most famous of v^hich is that of Mayence, at which 
forty thousand knights appeared (1184). 

Henry VI and Innocent III. — ^When Barbarossa, during the third 
Crusade, was drowned in the Selef, his son, Henry VI, succeeded him 
(1190). Being the husband of Constance, daughter and heiress of Roger 
II, king of Sicily, he planted the house of Suabia in southern Italy. It 
thus made amends for what authority it had lost in the north, and surrounded 
the domains of the Holy See on all sides. Innocent HI (1198-1216) 
resolved to conjure this new danger. He had just excommunicated the 
kings of France, Aragon and Norway for most flagrant breaches of the 
moral laws, and once more set a portion of Christendom in motion by 
preaching the fourth Crusade. Seeing the kings humbled before him and 
the peoples rising at his call, the Pope must have felt strong enough to gain 
the upper hand of the ambitious house that persisted in adhering to the 
claim of imperial supremacy over Rome. In Germany he supported Otho 
of Brunswick against Philip of Suabia, and the great struggle between the 
Guelphs, friends of the Church, and the Ghibelines, supporters of the 
empire, began. But, dissatisfied with Otho, who was scarcely rid of his 
rival when he showed the same pretensions over Italy, Innocent returned 
to the house of Suabia, and had the young Frederick H, son of Henry 
VI, acknowledged as emperor on condition that he would abandon the 
two Sicilies. But this prince, a friend of art and literature, of loose morals 
and skeptical religious ideas, kept those provinces, in which he preferred to 
sojourn. In his palaces of Naples, Messina and trilingual Palmero, he 
busied himself with his chancellor, Pierre des Vignes, in strengthening the 
organization of his Italian kingdom; and, so as to have always a resource 
against the censures of the Church, he enlisted an army of Saracens in his 



service. 



Frederick II and the Papacy. — ^With alarm did the Pope see that 
German hold on to Italy — in the south by his kingdom of the Two Sicilies, in 
the centre by the allodial lands of the Countess Matilda, which the empire 
had claimed, and in the north by the influence and rights which his title 
of emperor gave or permitted him to take up again. He obliged him to take 
the cross, so as to get him away, and, as Frederick hesitated and had recourse 
to subterfuges, he threatened him with excommunication if he did not 
fulfil his engagement. Frederick went, but did not fight. A treaty with 
the sultan of Egypt having opened the gates of the holy city to him (1228), 



234 The Northmen and FeudaHsm 

he crowned himself king of Jerusalem and made haste to return. To the 
energetic old man then occupying St. Peter's Chair, his absence gave time 
for reorganizing the Lombard League against him, for making his son, the 
young Prince Henry, rebel, and for hurling an adventurer at the head of an 
army on the kingdom of Naples. Frederick got the better of all his adver- 
saries and the victory of Corte Nuova (1237) over the Lombards seemed to 
place Italy under his feet. The Pope alone did not yield. He hurled 
excommunication against him, deposed him, and offered the imperial crown 
to Robert of Artois, brother of the king of France. Louis IX refused and 
reproached the Pope with wishing "to trample, not only upon the emperor, 
but upon all kings. " Gregory then sought to seek support from a Council 
which he convened to meet in 1241 in St. John Lateran's, but at La Melloria 
Frederick's vessels defeated the Genoese fleet carrying the Fathers to the 
Council. Two cardinals, some bishops, and a few abbots were captured. 
Gregory died, it is said, of grief. His successor. Innocent IV (1242), escaped 
from Rome in disguise, and at Lyons convened a great Council which 
excommunicated Frederick II and ordered a crusade preached against 
him (1244). When the emperor heard of this, he took his crown, fastened 
it down upon his head, and said : " It will not fall from there before torrents 
of blood have been shed." He appealed to the sovereigns of Europe: 
"If I perish, you will all perish!" Then he hurled his Saracens on central 
Italy, while Ezzelino da Romano, tyrant of Padua and his ally, set blood 
flowing copiously in the north. But the cities rose up everywhere at the 
call of priests and monks; from one end of the peninsula to the other the 
Guelphs had armed in favor of the Holy Father, who, to be free, then 
did Frederick humble himself. He offered to abdicate, to go and die in the 
Holy Land, to divide his heritage on condition that it would be left to his 
children; but Innocent remained inexorable, and sought the annihilation 
of that "race of vipers." The struggle was about to become atrocious 
when the emperor died suddenly (1250). That death announced the fall 
of German domination in Italy, and the beginning for the peninsula of a 
new period, that of independence. 



CHAPTER XV 



Era of The Crusades 



Condition of the Orient — the Early Capetians. — In the world of 
the Middle Ages there were really two worlds, that of the Gospel and that 
of the Koran, later on to become that of the Cross and that of the Crescent, 
the one in the north, the other in the south. They had long been in con- 
flict at their extremities, in Spain and in western Asia. At the close of 
the eleventh century the two regions came to body blows, and this struggle 
is called the Crusades. Mussulman Asia was then in the power, no longer 
of the Arabs, but of the Seljukian Turks, who, under Alp Arslan (1063) 
and Malek Shah (1075), had conquered Syria, Palestine, and the greater 
part of Asia Minor. Upon the death of Malek Shah his empire had been 
divided into the sultanates of Persia, Syria and Kerman, to which must 
be added that in Asia Minor of Roum or Iconium. The empire of Con- 
stantinople, which should have served as a bulwark of Christendom, had, 
then, yielded to that invasion. Separated since 1054 from communion 
with Rome by the final consummation of the schism of the Greek Church, 
it was incapable of holding out against its enemies, in spite of the passing 
vigor that had been given it by a few emperors of the Macedonian dynasty, 
Nicephorus Phocas, John Zimisces and Basil II, who had been success- 
ful against the Bulgarians, the Russians and the Arabs. Another valiant 
prince, Romanus Diogenes, after three brilliant campaigns against the 
Turks, was taken prisoner by them, and Alexis, one of his successors, 
confessing his weakness and dangers, asked the west for aid. 

Pilgrimages to the holy places of Palestine from the various sections 
of Christendom had been numerous and comparatively safe during the 
Arab domination; but under the Turks it became quite dangerous to 
take part in them. Many ran the risk, however, and by no means all 
returned home. While feudal Europe was thus covering the roads lead- 
ing lO Jerusalem, the great modern nations were beginning to define their 
boundaries. Italy was being separated from Germany, France was 
seeking to sunder itself from England, and Spain was striving to get rid 
of the Moors. The Capetian royalty, which had begun in France the 

235 



236 Era of the Crusades 

first effort at Internal organization, was very weak In the beginning. Hugh 
Capet spent his nine years' reign (987-996) in strugghng against the last 
representative of the Carolingian family and in having himself acknowl- 
edged in the south, an undertaking in which he did not succeed. His 
son, Robert, whom he had had anointed before his own death, so as the 
better to secure the succession to him (996), reigned piously, though ex- 
communicated for having married Bertha, his too near relative. He 
was wise enough to refuse the crown of Italy when it was offered to him, 
but gathered in the duchy of Burgundy by inheritance (1002). Henry 
I (1031) and Philip I (1060) lived in obscurity. The latter did not even 
take part either in the Crusade to Jerusalem or in the conquest of Eng- 
land, both carried out by his vassals. These kings remained satisfied 
with being permitted to live, and that was already a great deal. From 
the ninth to the twelfth century, in fact, royalty existed only in name, 
because the public powers, which should have remained in its hands, 
had become domain powers exercised by all the territorial lords. To 
that revolution which had for three centuries broken the country's unity 
another was about to succeed that would strive to gather together the 
scattered members of French society and take away from the lords the 
rights they had usurped. This revolution, which would make the king 
the sole judge, the sole administrator, the sole lawgiver of the country, 
was to begin with Philip Augustus and St. Louis IX, who would recon- 
struct a central government, but it would be completed only with Louis 
XIV, because the hundred years' war in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
turies and the wars of religion in the sixteenth would suspend that great 
internal, but in the end far from beneficent, work. 

The First Crusade Started on Its Mission. — This centralizing 
tendency was materially aided in its beginnings by one of the most remark- 
able movements known to history. At the very opening of the eleventh 
century Pope Sylvester II had spoken to the western peoples of going 
to free the Holy Sepulchre (1002). Even without proper organization 
and protection, pilgrimages had multiplied. Troops of several thousands 
of pilgrims visited the holy places and returned to tell Europe of the out- 
rages and cruelties perpetrated by the Mussulmans. Gregory VII re- 
vived Sylvester's project, and Urban II carried it out. At Piacenza he 
convened a first Council, at which ambassadors from Alexis Comnenus 
appeared, and then a second, at Clermont in Auvergne, to which an in- 
numerable multitude flocked. Adding his majestic appeal to the wholly 
popular appeal of Pierre I'Hermite (erroneously known as Peter the 
Hermit), who had just returned from the Holy Land, he carried the multi- 



Era of the Crusades 237 

tude with him and, to the cry of "God wills it!" every man put upon his 
outer garment the red cross, the emblem of the Crusade (1095). The 
first contingent to set out was the Crusade of the people, the vileins, the 
poor. Men, old as well as young, and even women and children started 
pell mell under Peter's guidance and that of an obscure gentleman, Walter 
the Penniless. Almost all of that vast multitude perished in Hungary, 
and the comparatively few who succeeded in reaching Constantinople 
fell under the scimitar in Asia Minor. The following year the Crusade 
of the barons, more prudent, better organized, and more military, set 
out. Four large armies assembled, made up especially of Frenchmen. 
The first, at the head of which were Godfrey de Bouillon, duke of Lower 
Lorraine, Eustace of Burgundy, Baldwin of Bourg and Baldwin of Flan- 
ders, consisted of the men of eastern France (Lorraine, Burgundy, Flan- 
ders and Frisia); the second, comprising the men of the centre and west 
(Isle of France, Touraine, Normandy and Brittany), obeyed Hugh the 
Great, count of Vermandois, Stephen, count of Blois, and Robert Cour- 
teheuse, son of William the Conqueror; the third gathered in the men 
of the south or Provencals, under Raymond of St. Gilles, count of Tou- 
louse; and the fourth, which assembled at Brindisi, was made up of the 
Normans of Italy, under the orders of the prince of Tarento, the able 
and cunning Bohemond. These four armies took three different routes. 
The Lorrainers and northern French followed the footsteps of Pierre 
I'Hermite; the southern French went by way of Lombardy and Croatia; 
the duke of Normandy and the counts of Blois, Flanders and Vermandois 
went to Brindisi to join the Italian Normans, who crossed the Adriatic, 
Macedonia and Thrace. The meeting place of these six hundred thous- 
and men was Constantinople; but, though they had heroes in plenty, 
they had no Napoleon, Caesar, or Alexander the Great. 

How Judea Became a Christian Kingdom. — It was only with 
misgivings that the emperor Alexis received in his capital guests so un- 
cultured as were the western warriors, and, as soon as possible, he had 
them conveyed beyond the Bosphorus. They first besieged Nicaea, at 
the entrance to Asia Minor, and let the Greeks plant their flag there when 
the city had been compelled to surrender. The sultan of Roum (Iconium), 
Kilidj Arslan, tried to stop them; but they defeated him at Dorylaeum 
(1097) and penetrated into arid Phrygia. Thirst and hunger decimated 
the army and killed nearly all the horses; and misunderstanding was 
already dividing the leaders. Baldwin of Flanders, however, who was 
marching ahead, captured Edcssa, on the upper Euphrates, and the bulk 
of the army, after having taken Tarsus, reached Antioch (1098). Its 



238 Era of the Crusades 

siege was long, and the sufferings of the Crusaders terrible. At last the 
city opened its gates to the intrigues of Bohemond, who had himself ap- 
pointed as its prince; but in their turn the Crusaders were besieged by 
two hundred thousand men who had been gathered by Kerboga, the 
lieutenant of the khalif of Bagdad. They cleared the way for themselves 
by a fresh victory, and, reduced to fifty thousand, at last marched on Jeru- 
salem, which they entered after a siege no less difficult than that of Antioch 
(July 15, 1099). Godfrey, elected king, accepted only the title of Defender 
and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre, refusing "to wear a crown of gold where 
the king of kings had worn a crown of thorns. " The victory of Ascalon, 
which he won soon afterwards over an Egyptian army, coming to recapture 
Jerusalem, secured the conquest. 

Left to itself by the withdrawal of most of the Crusaders, the little 
kingdom of Jerusalem was organized for defence and constituted regularly 
in accordance with the principles of feudalism, transferred ready made to 
Asia. As its code it had the Assizes of Jerusalem, which Godfrey had 
drawn up, a complete reproduction of feudal rule. Fiefs were established — 
the principalities of Edessa and Antioch, to which were afterwards added the 
county of Tripoli, the marquisate of Tyre, and the lordships of Nablus, 
Jaffa, Ramla and Tiberias. The country was subjected to three jurisdic- 
tions, namely, the king's court, that of the viscount of Jerusalem, and the 
Syrian tribunal, for the natives. Two great military institutions, the order 
of Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, founded by Gerard de Martigues 
(hoc), and that of the Templars (11 18), by Hugues de Payens, were 
entrusted with the defence of the country. Owing to these wise institu- 
tions, the kingdom of Jerusalem continued the impulse of conquest under 
Godfrey's first two successors, Baldwin I (1100-1118) and Baldwin H 
(1118-1131) of Bourg; Caesarea, Ptolemais, Byblos, Beirut, Sidon and 
Tyre were acquired. But, after these two reigns, decadence began with 
discords, and Noureddin, sultan of Syria, of the family of the Atabeks, 
conquered Edessa, whose population he massacred (1144). 

France under Louis the Fat and Louis VII. — The reign of Louis VI 
marks the first strengthening of Capetian royalty (1108-1137). This 
active and resolute prince triumphed over nearly all the petty lords, robber 
barons, in the neighborhood of Paris, and favored the forming of communes, 
self-governing townships, on his vassals' lands, a system that had already 
been introduced in many sections of the north; but he did not, though it 
weakened the lords, let it prevail in his domains. He had a war with Hen- 
ry I of England, whom he wished to compel to cede Normandy to his neph- 
ew William Cliton. He was not successful, however, being defeated at 



Era of the Crusades 239 

Brennevllle (1119; but in 1124 Henry V, emperor of Germany, son-in- 
law of the king of England, having threatened France, Louis sent against 
him a powerful army in which the men of the communes figured and for 
which the enemy did not wait. In the north he imposed Cliton for a short 
time on the Flemings, who had assassinated their count (1126), In the 
south he protected the bishop of Clermont against the count of Auvergne, 
compelled the duke of Aquitaine to do him homage, and obtained for his 
son, Louis the Younger, the hand of Eleonora, heiress of that powerful 
lord. By this marriage Louis VII added to the royal domain Aquitaine, 
Poitou, Limousin, Bordelais, Agenois and the old duchy of Gascony, and 
acquired suzerainty over Auvergne, Perigord, La Marche, Saintonge, 
Angoumois, etc. But in a war with the count of Champagne he burned 
thirteen hundred persons in the church of Vitry, was stricken with remorse 
for this, set out for the Crusade, and returned from it with grievances 
so serious against Eleonora that he became divorced from her and gave 
her dowry of the duchy of Guienne, thus retarding the unification of the 
country by three centuries. Eleonora, in fact married a less scrupulous 
prince, Henry Plantagenet, count of Anjou, duke of Normandy, and heir 
to the crown of England, a formidable power that enveloped and embar- 
rassed the small domain of the king of France. Happily that king was the 
suzerain, and the feudal law imposing respect on the vassal was still in 
full force. So Henry, having attacked Toulouse, dared not continue the 
siege, because Louis interfered against him. This prince, moreover, found 
support against his powerful adversary by alliance with the clergy, whom the 
Englishman was persecuting, and with Henry's sons, who were in rebellion 
against him. He received kindly Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canter- 
bury, whom Henry's officers afterwards assassinated when that prelate, 
trusting in the royal word, ventured to return to England. Louis died 
in 1 1 80. 

Second and Third Crusades. — During his reign the second Crusade 
had been organized and sent on its errand. The bloody disaster of Edessa 
had led Europe to make a renewed effort. St. Bernard of Clairvaux moved 
Christendom with his eloquent appeals. In the great assembly of Vezelay 
Louis VII, who wished to do penance for the Vitry holocaust, his wife, 
Eleonora of Guienne, and a multitude of great vassals and barons put on the 
cross. The emperor of Germany, Conrad III, the first to set out, penetrated 
into the heart of Asia Minor, and lost his whole army in the defiles of the 
Taurus. He returned almost alone to Constantinople, which Louis VII 
had just reached. The latter was scarcely more fortunate in following 
the coast so as to avoid the dangerous solitudes of the interior — he was not 



240 Era of the Crusades 

able to reach Syria. In Cilicia he abandoned the multitude of the pilgrims, 
who fell before the arrows of the Turks, and, with his nobles, he embarked 
on Greek vessels, reached Antioch and then Damascus, which the Crusaders 
unavailingly besieged. From that expedition he brought back only his 
fateful divorce. 

The fall of Jerusalem (1187) into the hands of Saladin, who had united 
Egypt and Syria under his sway, stirred up the third Crusade. In all lands, 
even those of the Church, the Pope established the Saladin tithe. The three 
most powerful monarchs of Europe set out, namely, the emperor Frederick 
Barbarossa, Philip Augustus, king of France, and the king of England, 
Richard the Lion-hearted (1189). Barbarossa reached Asia through 
Hungary and Constantinople, and he had arrived in Cilicia when he was 
drowned in the Selef. Almost his whole army was destroyed. Philip 
and Richard made out better by a new route, the sea. The former had 
embarked at Genoa, the latter at Marseilles. They took a rest in Sicily, 
where they began to quarrel. Richard stopped again at Cyprus to depose 
a usurper there, Isaac Comnenus, and again joined Philip under the walls 
of Ptolemais, which the Crusaders were besieging. They remained there for 
over two years, wholly engaged in chivalrous acts of prowess against the 
Saracens and quarrels among themselves. Philip used these disorders as an 
excuse for returning to France, and Richard, remaining in Palestine, was 
unable to recapture Jerusalem. On his way home a storm drove him 
on the coast of Dalmatia. He wanted to pass through Germany on his 
way to England; but Leopold, duke of Austria, whose banner he had 
caused to be thrown into the trenches of Acre (Joppe), kept him as a 
prisoner until he had paid an enormous ransom. 

France under Philip Augustus. — ^This prince, the last king of France 
anointed before his accession, repaired his father's errors. In the beginning 
he expelled and robbed the Jews so as to get money, handed over to the 
Church heretics and blasphemers in order to win the support of the bishops, 
and formed a close alliance with the rebellious Richard, son of Henry 
II of England, so as to multiply embarrassments around that king. At 
the same time petty wars without peril, but not without profit, won him 
several slices of territory. On his return from Palestine he came to an 
understanding with John Lackland, brother of the new king of England, so 
as to despoil the latter, who, after leaving prison, reached England, and then 
France, in a rage. In the latter country war broke out violently in the south. 
Richard, troubadour and king, waged it and sang it at one and the same 
time. Pope Innocent III interposed and brought about a five years' truce. 
Two months later Richard was killed by an arrow at the siege of a castle 



Era of the Crusades 241 

in Limousin (1199). The crown of England devolved by right on young 
Arthur, son of an elder brother of John Lackland; but the latter usurped it, 
defeated his brother, and murdered him (1203). Philip Augustus sum- 
moned the murderer to appear at his court. John took good care not to go, 
and Philip used this action as an excuse to take Normandy from him. 
That rich province, from which the conquerors of England had come, then 
entered into the royal domain, and Brittany, which depended on it, became 
an immediate fief of the crown (1204). Poitou, Touraine and Anjou were 
also easily occupied. These were the most brilliant conquests a king of 
France had yet made. So as to be avenged, John formed a coalition 
against France with his nephew, Otho of Brunswick, emperor of Germany, 
and the barons of the Netherlands. Philip gathered a large army in which 
were the militia of the communes, and at Bouvines, between Lille and 
Tournay, won a victory whose renown was very great throughout the 
whole country. It was the first national trophy of France (12 14). Before 
his death (1223) Philip Augustus received the homage of Amaury de 
Montfort, son and heir of Simon, thus making French royalty reach the 
Pyrenees and the Mediterranean. As for internal affairs, the university 
of Paris had been founded, the supremacy of royal jurisdiction sanctioned 
by the judgment of the peers against John Lackland (1203), the kingdom 
subjected to a regular organization by division into bailiwicks and provost- 
ships, and Paris embelhshed, paved, and girt with a wall. In 1193 Philip 
had married Ingeburga of Denmark, v/hom he almost immediately repudi- 
ated so as to give her place to Agnes de Meranie. This scandal brought 
upon him the reprimands of Pope Innocent III, who long threatened the 
"eldest son of the Church" before striking him, but at last, to overcome his 
resistance, put the kingdom under an interdict. Philip saw the danger of an 
open rupture with the Church; he parted with Agnes and took back Inge- 
burga, at the Council of Soissons (1201). He remained a stranger to one 
of the great events of his reign, the crusade against the Albigenses (to be 
described later on) ; but, near its end, he sent his son to take part in it. 

Fourth Crusade and Latin Empire of Constantinople. — Innocent 
III was far from inclined to leaving Jerusalem in possession of the infidels. 
He had a fourth Crusade preached by Foulques, pastor of Neuilly near 
Paris, who enlisted the services of many of the nobility of Flanders and 
Champagne. Baldwin IX, count of Flanders, and Boniface II, marquis 
of Montferrat, were the leaders. Through ambassadors, one of whom 
was the historian of this Crusade, GeofFroi de Villehardouin, the Crusaders 
asked Venice for vessels. She made them pay for the service first in hard 
cash, and then in getting them to conquer for her the important city of 

V 16 



242 Era of the Crusades 

Zara in Dalmatia, which belonged to the king of Hungary. Thus first 
diverted from its rehgious object, the Crusade was so once more by Alexis, 
son of a dethroned Greek emperor who pretended that the keys of Jerusalem 
were at Constantinople. They went to restore him, and then, seeing that 
great capital a prey to anarchy, they took possession of it by main force, 
and divided the whole empire between them. Baldwin was made emperor 
of Romania. The Venetians, who took to themselves a whole quarter of 
Constantinople, most of the islands of the Archipelago, and the best sea- 
ports, styled themselves lords of a fourth and a half of the Greek empire. 
The marquis of Montferrat was king of Thessalonica, the provinces in 
Asia were given to the count of Blois, and a lord of Corinth, a duke of 
Athens, a prince of Achaia, etc., were set up. Several princes of the 
Comnenus family, however, retained some fragments, such as the princi- 
pality of Trapezus (Trebizond), Napoli of Argolis (Nauplia or Lepanto), 
Epirus and Nicaea. The Latin empire of Constantinople lasted fifty-seven 
years (i 204-1 261). 

Crusaders in the North— Teutonic Knights.— While the Crusaders 
were meeting with so little success in the Orient, in the North and West they 
were successful, for they founded two great States there, Prussia and Spain, 
and contributed to effecting the unity of another, France. In the interval 
between the first and second Crusades, merchants and gentlemen of Lubeck 
had founded for their fellow-countrymen in the Holy Land a hospital 
served by Germans. At Jerusalem everything assumed the religious and 
military form. These hospitaleirs were changed into an armed corporation, 
the Teutonic Order, which very soon acquired a great deal of property, 
and whose head was raised by Frederick II to the rank of a prince of the 
Empire. A regent of Poland entrusted them (1230) with fighting against 
and converting the Borussians or Prussians, between the Niemen and the 
Vistula. There they succeeded in destroying a part of the population, and 
kept the rest in check with the fortresses of Koenigsberg and Marienburg, 
which they had built. At the same time the Knights Swordbearers subdued 
the neighboring regions. When they had become united with the Teutonic 
order, Prussia, yEsthonia, Livonia and Courland, previously barbarian 
and pagan, became a part of civilized Europe, and in the north until the 
fifteenth century the order played the part of dominant power; but in the 
sixteenth its grand master, Albert of Brandenburg, a cousin and namesake 
of the famous archbishop of Mayence of Luther's time, secularized this 
ecclesiastical principality, which, in default of direct male heirs, fell to the 
Elector of Brandenburg in 1619. 

Crusading Wars of the Christians of Spain. — When Charles 



Era of the Crusades 243 

Martel and Pepin the Short drove the Arabs from France, they remained 
satisfied -with keeping them on the other side of the Pyrenees, within the 
Iberian peninsula. Mussulmans and Christians found themselves shut 
up as it were within a ring. Accordingly the history of Spain in the Middle 
Ages is that of a Crusade lasting nearly eight centuries. After the battle 
of Xeres (711), Pelagius and his companions had taken refuge in the 
Asturias, behind the Cantabrian Pyrenees, where Gihon was their first 
capital. Oviedo supplanted it in 760, when they had made an advance 
southward. Still later it was Leon, from which the kingdom took its name. 
Charlemagne protected these Christians. Out of the remnants of the 
Marches which he founded north of the Ebro other Christian States arose, 
such as the kingdom of Navarre (831) and the county of Barcelona, between 
which the lords of Aragon and the counts of Castile founded fiefs that 
became povv'erful kingdoms. Then there were in northern Spain, from 
Cape Creus to Coruna, a succession of Christian States backed by the 
mountains as fortresses, which extended directly southward. At the close 
of the ninth century Alfonso the Great, king of Oviedo, already reached 
and crossed the Douro. In the tenth the khalifate of Cordova, gaining 
fresh vigor, drove the Christians back in their turn, and the victorious 
sword of Abd-er-hhaman III defeated them at Simancas. Then the famous 
Almanzor took from them all the places on the banks of the Ebro and the 
Douro, and even Leon itself. But when this victor in fifty battles had 
himself been beaten at Calatanazor (998), the power of the khalifate fell 
with him. In the eleventh century the khalifate of Cordova was split into 
fragments, while the Christians became more united. Sancho III, king of 
Navarre about the year 1000, acquired by marriage the county of Castile, 
and gave it, with the title of king, to his second son, Ferdinand, who married 
a daughter of the king of Leon (1035). He likewise made a kingdom of the 
county of Jacca or Aragon for his third son, Ramiro II, while the eldest, 
Garcias, inherited Navarre. 

Thus were four Christian kingdoms founded and united by family 
alliances. Three, Navarre, Castile and Aragon, belonged to the sons of 
Sanchez; the fourth, Leon, remained separate, but in 1037 the male line of 
the descendants of Pelagius became extinct, and the council of the Asturias 
gave the crown to Ferdinand, who united Leon with Castile (1037). For 
some time internal affairs made the Spaniards forget the struggle against 
the Moslems, but when the holy war became popular in Europe, Alfonso VI 
(1073) began again to carry the cross forward. In 1085 he captured Toledo, 
which once more became a capital and a metropolis, as under the Visigoths. 
This was the fourth step of the Christians who had set out from the As- 
turias and were thereafter established in the heart of the peninsula. Five 



244 Era of the Crusades 

years later Henry of Burgundy, great-grandson of Robert, king of France, 
who had distinguished himself at the siege of Toledo, seized Porto Cale at 
the mouth of the Douro, which Alfonso erected for him in the county of 
Portugal. Almost at the same time the famous Cid (lord), Rodrigo de 
Bivar, the hero of Spanish romance, advanced from victory to victory along 
the Mediterranean and captured Valencia (1094). Lastly, in 11 18, Alfonso 
I, king of Aragon, secured a capital as the king of Castile had done, by 
taking Saragossa. 

The Almohad Moors in Spain. — The Arabs, having become effemin- 
ate and divided, and been consequently defeated, called to their aid in 
succession two bands of African Moors, sectarians who pretended to make 
Mohammed's religion simpler. They were the Almohavides or Almohads 
or Unitarians. The first, called in (1086) by Aben Abed, king of Seville, 
arrived under their chief, Yusuf, the founder of Morocco (1069), cut the 
Christian army to pieces at Zalaca, and for that service paid themselves 
at the expense of those who had brought them over. They even regained 
possession of Valencia after the Cid's death (1099), seized the Balearics 
and won at Ucles (1108), over Alfonso VI, a battle as bloody as that of 
Zalaca. But there their successes ended. Toledo drove them back on 
several occasions. Alfonso, son of Henry of Burgundy, who before the 
battle assumed the title of king of Portugal, won over them at Urica a 
complete victory (1139), which made him master of the banks of the Tagus 
and of some places beyond that river. More Almohads came from Moroc- 
co again in the following century. When they appeared (12 10) 400,000 
strong, all Europe became frightened, and Pope Innocent III had a Crusade 
preached to aid the Christians of Spain. The united Spanish kings de- 
stroyed them in the great battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, which for ever 
stopped large invasions from Africa (12 12). To these successes military 
orders had contributed, orders peculiar to Spain, such as those of Alcan- 
tara, Calatrava, St. James, in Castile, and in Portugal that of Evora. 
Anarchy marked by copious bloodshed completed the ruin of the Almohad 
domination. Cordova (1246), Seville (1248), Murcia (1266), and many 
other places fell into the power of the king of Castile, while Jayme I (Con- 
quistador), king of Aragon, subdued the kingdom of Valencia along with 
the Balearics (1244), and Portugal, by the final accession of the Algarves 
(1270), succeeded in rounding out the boundaries which it was thereafter 
to retain. At the end of the thirteenth century the Moors, then, possessed 
only the small kingdom of Granada, surrounded on all sides by the sea and 
the possessions of the king of Castile, who, by seizing Murcia, had separated 
the kingdom of Aragon from Mussulman rule. But within that small space, 



Era of the Crusades 245 

recruited by the populations which the Christians had driven from the 
conquered cities, they held out with a vigor that deferred their destruction 
for two centuries, for, mastered by external concerns, the Spaniards grad- 
ually suspended the holy war until the latter part of the fifteenth century. 

Crusade against the Albigenses. — ^We have seen how the Crusade 
against the pagans of the Baltic introduced civilization into a barbarian 
country; we will now see how that led by Simon de Montfort against 
the Albigensian heretics, which, however, was more political than religious, 
extinguished a peculiar form of it in a rich and prosperous region. In the 
population of the south of France, a mingling of various races, there had 
been formed religious opinions that were a reminder of Manicheism and 
that differed very widely from orthodoxy. Men gave the name of Albi- 
genses to those heretics (Albi was their centre), who received St. Bernard 
himself with hootings. Innocent III, frightened at the spread of the con- 
tagion of doctrines that taught race suicide, resolved to put his foot on that 
nest of heresy, and to Raymond VI, count of Toulouse, who was using the 
heretics to maintain his feudal independence, he sent his legate, the monk 
Peter of Castelnau, who demanded their expulsion, but obtained no satis- 
faction. Raymond was excommunicated (1207), but answered with 
threats. One of his knights followed the legate and murdered him as he 
was crossing the Rhone (1208). Immediately the monks of Citeaux 
preached a Crusade of extermination, and, as the indulgences were the 
same as for the journey to Jerusalem, the dangers less, and the profit more 
certain, men flocked in multitudes — among them the duke of Burgundy, 
the counts of Nevers, Auxerre and Geneva, the bishops of Rheims, Sens, 
Rouen and Autun, and a myriad of others. The leader was Simon de 
Montfort, the owner of a small estate and castle in the neighborhood of 
Paris, an ambitious, fanatical and cruel man. The war was pitilessly 
waged. At Beziers fifteen thousand of the inhabitants were put to death, 
and the victims were in proportion everywhere else. Raymond VI was 
vanquished at Castelnaudary, and the king of Aragon, Pedro II, in the 
battle of Muret, where he perished (12 13). The Council of Lateran gave 
the fiefs of the count of Toulouse to Simon de Montfort, and a number 
of other lords were dispossessed. It was the conquest of the south by the 
French of the north. The brilliant civilization of those provinces was 
strangled by those rude hands, as was the dangerous heresy subversive of 
all society that w^ould inevitably have destroyed it sooner or later; the gay 
science, as the troubadours called poetry, could not sing over so many 
bloody ruins, amid which was set up, as an ever threatening funeral spectre, 
the tribunal of the Inquisition. Louis, son of Philip Augustus, took part 



246 Era of the Crusades 

in this Crusade, but only towards its end. Did he feel that the consolida- 
tion of the kingdom was to benefit by it, as the result proved ? In their 
wretchedness the people of the Oc tongue remembered the king of France. 
Montpellier gave itself to him, and when Montfort had been killed at the 
siege of Toulouse, his son ceded to St. Louis the provinces which the Pope 
had given to his father, but which he could not hold against the universal 
execration of his subjects (1229). Thus neither Montfort nor his race 
benefited by that conquest, and the whole advantage of the Crusade fell 
to the house of France, which had at first remained a stranger to it. 

France under Louis VIII and St. Louis IX.— Louis VIII, who before 
his accession had been called to England by the barons in rebellion against 
King John, led a fresh expedition into the south. He took Avignon, 
Nimes, Albi and Carcassonne, and soon after his return died of an epidemic 
(1226). His eldest son, Louis, was not yet nine years old. The barons 
wished to take the regency away from the queen mother, Blanche of Castile. 
The most powerful among them formed a league, at the head of which 
was the Sire de Coucy. But Blanche won over to her cause the count of 
Champagne, and the war ended to the advantage of royalty (123 1). By 
the treaty of Paris (1229) Raymond VII abandoned to France all lower 
Languedoc, but retained the other half, on condition that it would form 
the dowry of his only daughter, betrothed to Alphonse, the king's second 
brother, already count of Poitou and of Auvergne. A part of upper Prov- 
ence was given to the Church; and this is the origin of the right of the 
Popes over the Comtat Venaissin, which they held until 1789. Another 
brother of St. Louis, Robert, was count of Artois (1237), while the third, 
Charles, had Anjou and Maine, and soon afterwards (1246) became also 
count of Provence by his marriage with the heiress Beatrix, and in the last 
place king of Naples (1268) by his victories over the house of Suabia. So 
the house of France extended and grew. 

Henry III, king of England, having put himself at the head of a revolt 
of the barons of Aquitaine and Poitou, St. Louis, victorious at Taillebourg 
and Saintes (1242), showed generosity so as to secure legal possession of 
what he retained. He consented (1259) ^^ restore or leave to the king of 
England, under the condition of liege homage, Limousin, Perigord, Quercy, 
Agenois, a part of Saintonge, and the duchy of Guienne; but, by virtue of a 
treaty, he kept Normandy, Touraine, Anjou, Poitou and Maine. He 
acted according to the same principle with the king of Aragon, ceding to 
him in full sovereignty the county of Barcelona, but obliging him to abandon 
his rights over the fiefs subject to him in France (1258). His virtues made 
him the arbiter of Europe, and he gave a halo of holiness to French royalty. 



Era of the Crusades 247 

He served as mediator between Innocent IV and Frederick II, and then 
between the king of England and his barons, on the question of the Oxford 
statutes. His internal government was aimed at making feudal disorder 
cease. In 1245 ^^ decreed that in his domains there would be truce between 
offender and offended for forty days, and that the weaker could have recourse 
to the royal judgment. He abolished the judicial duel in his domains 
(1260). He gave a wide scope to lawyers in royal justice, whose limits he 
extended. He established royal inspectors, after the manner of Char- 
lemagne's missi dominici, fixed the value and names of the royal money, 
and was the first to summon burgesses to his council. His reign may be 
regarded as the brightest period of the Middle Ages as to science, art and 
literature. 

The Last Crusades in the Orient. — It was under him that serious 
crusading against the Turks came to an end. We have seen the fate of the 
fourth of these great expeditions. Jerusalem had not been delivered, and the 
the barons of the Holy Land did not cease to invoke the aid of Christendom. 
Andrew II, king of Hungary, led to Egypt a fifth Crusade, which was 
fruitless. The sixth was conducted by Frederick II, who, taking advantage 
of the terror with which the approach of the Tartar hordes of Kharisme 
inspired Malek Kamel, obtained from him without fighting a truce of ten 
years with the restoration of the Holy City, Bethlehem, Nazareth and 
Sidon, and crowned himself king of Jerusalem (1229). Scarcely had he 
left on his way home when the Turcomans, fleeing before the Mongols of 
Genghis Khan, threw themselves on Syria, cut the Crusaders' army to 
pieces at Gaza, and captured the Holy City. On hearing of this Pope 
Innocent tried to arouse Europe and hurl it against the infidels. The 
spirit of the Crusades, constantly growing weaker, was now found only 
in the soul of St. Louis. During an illness he made a vow to go and deliver 
Jerusalem, and, in spite of the entreaties of his entire court, and even of 
his pious mother, Blanche of Castile, he embarked at Aigues-Mortes with 
a powerful army (1248). They wintered in Cyprus. The Crusaders had 
understood that the keys of Jerusalem were at Cairo, and in the following 
spring they set sail towards Egypt, where they took possession of Damietta. 
But their slow movements lost them everything. Insubordination broke 
out in the army, and excesses brought on epidemics. Stopped a whole 
month by the canal of Ashmun, after having at last crossed it they met 
disaster at Mansurah, through the imprudence of Robert of Artois. During 
the retreat they were decimated by the plague and harassed by the Mussul- 
mans, who took the king prisoner. St. Louis gave as ransom one million 
gold besants, and then passed into Palestine, where he staid three years, 



248 Era of the Crusades 

using his influence to maintain harmony and his resources to strengthen the 
cities. He had been a failure as leader of that great expedition; yet sixteen 
years later he tried another. In 1270 his brother, Charles of Anjou, king 
of the Two Sicilies, persuaded him that it was necessary to attack the 
Mussulmans of Tunis, whose threats were making him uneasy for his new 
kingdom. Under the walls of that city the Crusaders found famine and 
pestilence, and St. Louis died of the latter. The princes who had accom- 
panied him purchased their retreat, especially Charles of Anjou, who 
concluded a peace rather advantageous to his Sicilian subjects. This 
Crusade was the last. 

Results of the Crusades in the Orient. — These great expeditions, in 
which France took the most important part, had cost the lives of vast 
multitudes and failed in their direct object, since the Holy Land remained 
in possession of the infidels; but they had brought Europe and Asia closer 
together and, in Europe itself, all the Christian nations, and in each country 
all classes of the population. In commerce they multiplied business 
relations, and, in regard to ideas, they enlarged the horizon of thought. 
They opened the Orient to Christian travelers, such as Ascelino, Piano 
Carpino, Rubruquis, and, most eminent of all, Marco Polo, to the court of 
the khan of the Mongols and into China (thirteenth century), and to the 
merchants of Marseilles, Barcelona, Pisa, Genoa and Venice. To industry 
they revealed new processes, and to the western countries new plants, such 
as the mulberry, maize, sugar cane, etc. Feudalism was weakened by the 
empty deeds to its credit and by the sales of land to which a certain number 
of the Crusaders had to have recourse in order to procure the resources 
necessary for the expedition. The communal movement gained more 
strength from it, and the enfranchisement of the serfs more scope. In the 
last place, the Crusades gave rise to the Knights Templars and those of 
St. John of Jerusalem, who defended the Holy Land, and to the Teutonic 
Knights, who at an early period left the Orient and went to convert and 
subdue the pagan tribes on the shores of the Baltic; and they made neces- 
sary the use of surnames and of coats of arms (emblazonry,) so as to dis- 
tinguish the individual in the midst of those multitudes and to recognize 
the warrior under his sombre armor. As a result of the religious move- 
ment of which the Crusades were themselves the consequence we may 
regard the creation of new religious orders, and place the mendicant friars 
side by side with the soldier monks. The Crusade which the latter con- 
tinued externally, the former continued internally. The Franciscans, 
from whom sprang the Recollects, the Cordeliers and the Capuchins, date 
from 1215, and the Dominicans of Jacobins from 12 16. Exempted from 




MARIE ANTOINETTE IN THE CONCIERGERIE. 
In August, 1793, the Ex-Queen-Consort of France was removed from the 
Temple Prison to that of the Palais de Justice, called La Conciergerie where 
she is represented In th« picture guarded by her Jailers. She was removed 
from this prison to be executed by the guillotine on October 16 1793 




COLUMBUS FIRST SIGHTING AMERICA. 

^ , *i,^ r.,«rr.in<r nf Novembcr 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus dis- 

^^'^y ^'ir^*'?.nTf?om the deckel his ship, sknta Maria. It proyed to be 
Tneft The Bahamf islands^'^buflts «act Iden^tity has not yet been established. 



Era of the Crusades 249 

the Jurisdiction of the bishops, they were the militia of the Holy See. 
Possessing nothing and Hving on alms, they traversed the world to bear 
the Gospel whithersoever a too rich clergy no longer carried it, among the 
poor, on the highways, in the streets of towns and the public places every- 
where. The bishops disputed with the Pope the right to grant to the mendi- 
cant friars the privilege of preaching and of performing the functions of 
the parochial clergy; and on this subject St. Thomas Aquinas had already 
made answer: "If a bishop can delegate his powers in a diocese, the Pope 
has the right to do likewise in Christendom." 

The Jerusalem Crusade had failed, but it had produced generous 
results for the civiHzation of the Middle Ages; that of Spain, devoid of 
consequence to the social state of Europe at that epoch, changed the face of 
that country and in the sixteenth century reacted on modern Europe. It 
wrested the peninsula from the Moors and gave it to the Christians. The 
little kingdom of Portugal thought it was continuing the Crusade beyond 
sea when it discovered the Cape of Good Hope, and in that war of eight 
centuries the kings of Aragon and Castile assumed an ambition that led 
them into many adventures, and their subjects military morals that made 
them the condottieri of Charles V and Philip II, instead of the peaceful arid 
active heirs of the industry, commerce and brilliant civilization of the Arabs. 
Why this difference, then, between the two Crusades ^ It is a matter of 
distance. Palestine bordered on the territory of Mecca, and Spain was 
within sight of Rome; Jerusalem, at the extreme limit of the Catholic 
world, was to remain in possession of the Mussulmans, as Toledo, the last 
halting place of advancing Islamism in the west, was to fall into the hands 
of the Christians. Geography explains many things. 

Urban Population of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. — 

Since the fall of the Carolingian empire we have seen three facts — the 
establishment of feudalism, the struggle between the Pope and the emperor 
over the mastery of Italy and ecclesiastical investiture, and the crusades. 
A fourth was produced which resulted from the other three, and in its turn 
had serious consequences, namely, the reconstituting of the -class of free men. 
Let us note its character before returning to the special study of the States. 
In 987 the vileins had risen up in Normandy; but feudalism was then 
too strong, and they were crushed. But if the barons held the rural dis- 
tricts, the dwellers in the towns regained courage and boldness behind their 
walls and in their numbers. In 1067 the city of Le Mans took up arms 
against its lord. This was the beginning of that communal movement 
which was manifested throughout the whole of Europe from the eleventh to 
the fourteenth century. Many cities in the north of France and the Nether- 



250 Era of the Crusades 

lands, like Le Mans, wrested from their lords, whether bishops or lay counts, 
commune charters that assured to their inhabitants guarantees for the 
security of person and property, and a jurisdiction to their magistrates, 
mayors, juries, aldermen, etc. The privileges obtained in the communes, 
usually by insurrection, were won in the burgess cities by concession from 
the king. South of the Loire many cities had retained or revived the 
municipal organization that they had had under the Roman empire. 

Through these various causes there was gradually formed, behind the 
shelter of these privileges and the security they gave, a middle class that 
grew rich from industry and commerce, that formed powerful corporations, 
filled the universities, and acquired knowledge, especially that of the laws, 
along with wealth. As merchants, St. Louis was to call them into his 
council; as lawyers, they were to guide kings in their struggle against 
feudalism; as burgesses, they were to enter the States General of Philip 
the Fair and then to form an order in the kingdom, the Third Estate. In 
England the cities sent representatives to Parliament from the year 1264; 
and in the Parliament of 1295 one hundred and twenty cities and towns 
were represented. At an early date Italy had its republics, and the Lombard 
League, victorious over Frederick Barbarossa, imposed upon him the treaty 
of Constance (1183), which changed their usurpations into rights. North 
of the Alps the emperors, so as to weaken feudalism, made immediate the 
cities (Imperial Cities) which, with a view to mutual protection, formed 
themselves into leagues the most famous of which was the great commercial 
union of the Hansa, whose flag waved from London to Novgorod. This 
progress of the populations of towns led to one for the rural populations. 
Already in the twelfth century serfs had been admitted as witnesses in 
court, and Popes had asked for their obtaining liberty. Accordingly 
enfranchisements were becoming numerous; for the barons were beginning 
to understand that they would gain by having on their lands industrious 
free men rather than serfs "who neglected work, saying they were working 
for others." The burgesses, vileins and serfs found a powerful auxiliary 
in the Roman law, though, strange to say, that law did not promote politi- 
cal liberty; and for this reason, in the interest of their own power, the 
kings encouraged the study of it; but, having as its starting point natural 
equity and the common utility, it permitted the lawyers to work in many 
ways for the enfranchisement of the two great servitudes of the Middle 
Ages, that of man and that of the land. In the thirteenth century there 
began between rational law and feudal law that silent war which was to end 
only in the terrible upheaval of the French Revolution. 

Intellectual Progress. — ^With more order in the State, more work in 



Era of the Crusades 251 

the cities, more comfort in the home, there arose other needs, those of the 
mind. Schools were multipHed, studies were extended, and national 
literatures begun. The twelfth century had heard the two great rival voices 
of the Breton philosopher Abelard, who used a certain freedom of thought, 
and of St. Bernard, the apostle of dogmatic authority. The thousands of 
scholars who pressed around Abelard were the nucleus of the University 
of Paris. In 1200 the Study later on (1250) called by the above name was 
endowed by Philip Augustus with its first privileges, one of which consisted 
in depending only on the ecclesiastical tribunals. It served as a model for 
many others, such as Montpellier, Orleans, Cambridge, Oxford, Salamanca, 
etc., and soon became a focus of scholastic science, an arena of ideas; its 
opinion was authority in the greatest debates, and whatever there was in the 
catholicity of great men came out of it. The two mendicant orders, Domini- 
cans and Franciscans, recently created, had also men of genius in their 
ranks, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, who proposed to embrace in his Summa 
Theologica all that was known on the relations between God and man, and 
St. Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor. We must also mention the German 
Albertus Magnus, the Englishman Roger Bacon, a worthy predecessor of 
the other Bacon, the Scotsman (or perhaps Irishman) Duns Scotus, and 
lastly Vincent of Beauvais, the encyclopaedist of that age, the author of the 
Speculum Majus. But, with the exception of Bacon, who, though he did 
not discover gunpowder, in his writings explained its composition, glass 
expansion, and the air pump, all lived on the remnants of ancient knowl- 
edge without adding anything to it. Accordingly, old errors and new 
errors were popular, and even Bacon propagated them. Men believed in 
astrology or the influence of the stars over human life, in alchemy, which 
made men search for the philosopher's stone, that is, the means of making 
gold by the transmutation of metals, and sorcerers swarmed. 

National Literatures. — In proportion as the individuality of the 
peoples became marked, the national literatures were developed; but one 
branch of them, the epic or ballad of adventure (Chanson de Geste), 
degenerated. Martin of Troyes (after 1160) spun out in a long octosyllabic 
poem the legend of Arthur, and William of Lorris (died 1260) wrote the 
Romance of the Rose, full of refined ideas and cold allegories. But Rute- 
beuf produced a frank and original poetry. French prose was born with 
GeofFroi de Villehardouin, seneschal of Champagne, whose beautiful book 
on the Conquest of Constantinople is still read, and with Joinville, who, 
after the seventh Crusade, wrote his Memoirs, already more refined and 
more perfect in style, in which we have a presentiment of Froissart. As 
for the literature of the south of France, after Saving given brilliant trouba- 



2 52 Era of the Crusades 

dours (Bernard de Ventadour, Bertrand de Born and Richard Coeur de 
Lion), it had perished in the deluge of the Albigensians' blood. 

German literature shone under the Hohenstaufens, but with a light 
that was only a reflection of that of France. Wolfram of Eschenbach 
imitated in Suabia the epics of the Charlemagne cycle or of the Round 
Table. The Niebelungen, however, have a wholly barbarian character that 
reveals their Germanic origin. The love singers (minnesinger) and the 
master singers (meistersinger) took inspiration from Provencal poetry. 
German prose scarcely appears in a few rare monuments of the thirteenth 
century. In Italy Dante had already been born (1265). Spain had its 
war songs in the romances of Bernardo del Carpio, the Children of Lara, 
and the Cid. But England was still too busy with blending into a single 
idiom the German of the Saxons and the French of the Normans to have 
literary works. Its first great poet, Chaucer, belongs to the following age. 

The original art of the Middle Ages, architecture, reached its perfection 
in the thirteenth century. It is then simple, severe, imposing, while in the 
following century it is to become flowery and flamboyant. In France it 
produced Notre Dame of Paris, Notre Dame of Chartres, the Sainte Chapelle 
of Paris, and the cathedrals of Amiens, Rheims, Strasbourg, Bourges, Sens 
Coutances, etc. Corporations of lay architects were formed. Lanfranc 
and William of Sens cooperated in the building of the Canterbury cathedral, 
Pierre de Bonneuil went to Sweden and there built the Upsala cathedral 
(1258), and in the same century Maitre Jean erected the cathedral of 
Utrecht, while French artists worked on that of Milan. Sculpture was 
coarse; but the glass of the churches was magnificent, and the miniature 
painters adorned the oflfice books of the clergy with delightful masterpieces. 



CHAPTER XVI 



The Later Middle Ages in France and England 



The Norman Conquest of England. — ^We have recorded the struggle 
between Saxons and Danes in England. After Knut the Great (1036) 
that struggle became complicated with a new element. The princes 
of Saxon origin dispossessed by the Danes had found a refuge with the 
Normans of France. When Edward the Confessor ascended the throne 
of his ancestor, Alfred the Great, he drew a large number of them to his 
court and distributed to them the chief bishoprics. The Saxons became 
jealous, and powerful Earl Godwin, their leader, succeeded in having 
the Normans driven out; but his son, Harald, who succeeded to his dig- 
nities and his influence, entertained the unfortunate idea of going to Nor- 
mandy, and there Duke William, having him in his power, made him prom- 
ise to help him ascend the throne of England after Edward. When this 
prince died (1066), Harald, elected king by the Witenagemot, did not 
pay any attention to a promise wrung from him by force, and William, 
accusing him of perjury, undertook the conquest of England with the 
permission of the Holy See, which on its part complained that the St. 
Peter's pence had not been paid. WiUiam landed with his army at Pev- 
ensy in Kent while Harald was in the north repelling an invasion of the 
Norwegians, whom he totally defeated at the battle of Stamford Bridge. 
As soon as possible, with thinned ranks, he marched against the southern 
invader, but was defeated and slain in the battle of Hastings, or rather 
Senlac (Battle Abbey, 1066). The Saxons, however, did not long resign 
themselves to their reverse. They resisted with the aid of the Welsh (1067), 
of the Norwegians (1069), and then in the island of Ely, where they formed 
the Camp of Refuge (1072). Many of them (outlaws), rather than accept 
the yoke, lived in the forests, where the Norman barons tracked them. 

William divided England among his companions in arms. The 
domains of the Saxons, lay and ecclesiastical, were occupied by the con- 
querors, many of whom, cowherds and weavers or mere clerks on the 
continent, became lords and bishops in England. From 1080 to 1086 
a register was prepared of all the properties occupied. This is the Great 

263 



2 54 The Later Middle Ages in France and England 

Court Roll of England, by the Saxons called Domesday Book. On the 
land thus divided the most regular feudal body in Europe was settled: 
Six hundred barons, below them sixty thousand knights, and above them 
the king, who took to himself fourteen hundred and sixty-two manors 
along with the chief cities, and was careful, in requiring the direct oath of 
the simple knights, to bind all vassals closely to him. This is worthy of 
consideration, for the whole history of England hangs on this division, 
as that of France does on the inverse position given to the first Capetians. 
English royalty, so strong on the morrow of the conquest, soon became 
oppressive, and obliged the barons, so as to be in a state to struggle against it, 
to unite with the burgesses, and thus they assured their rights only by guaran- 
teeing those of their allies. It was by that agreement public liberties were 
established in England, and that is why the nobility have remained popular 
there. Accordingly the feeling prevalent in the country has been that of the 
freedom to which their boasted institutions are due, and therefore they have 
not shown the passion for equality to which everything has been sacri- 
ficed in France. In the early days of French national life, the oppressor 
was not the petty lord of the Isle of France who wore the crown, but feuda- 
lism; the oppressed, king and people, united against it, and the leader 
who conducted the battle kept for it all the advantages of victory, so that, 
instead of general liberties, the French got the absolute authority of the 
king, and then the feeling and need of equality found in the common de- 
pendence of nobles and villeins in regard to it. 

The Conqueror's Norman Successors, — William the Conqueror 
died in 1087, in an expedition against Philip I king of France, who had 
taken French Vexin from him. William II the Red (Rufus), his second 
son, succeeded him in England, and Robert Courteheuse (Short Thy), 
the eldest, in Normandy. Robert tried, indeed, to take England from 
his younger brother; but he did not succeed, and set out for the Crusade. 
He was still there when William Rufus met his death w^hile hunting. Their 
youngest brother, Henry I Beauclerk, took possession of the crown, and, 
when Robert wished to enforce his rights, he defeated him at Tinchebray 
(1106), united Normandy with England, and beat Louis the Fat, who 
tried at least to secure the duchy to William Cliton, Robert's son (1109). 
Henry I, when dying, thought he was leaving the throne to his daughter, 
Matilda, widow of the emperor Henry V, and then vvife of Geoffrey Plant- 
agenet, count of Anjou. He had charged his nephew, Stephen of Blois, 
to protect the empress, as she was called. Stephen took the crown for 
himself and, in the battle of the Standard, defeated the Scotch, Matilda's 
allies; but, less fortunate against herself, he was taken prisoner. It was 



The Later Middle Ages in France and England 255 

then agreed that he would remain king until his death, and that his suc- 
cessor would be Henry of Anjou, Matilda's son. 

House of Plantagenet — Henry H. — Matilda had surrendered 
Normandy and Maine to her son in 1148. In 1151 he inherited Anjou and 
Touraine from his father. His marriage the following year with Eleonora 
the divorced wife of Louis the Younger of France brought him Poitiers, 
Bordeaux, Agen and Limoges, along with the suzerainty over Auvergne, 
Aunis, Saintonge Angoumois, La Marche and Perigord. In 1154, at the 
age of twenty-one, he ascended the throne of England, and later on he mar- 
ried one of his sons to the heiress of Brittany. This power was formidable 
but he wasted it in struggling against his clergy and his sons. The clergy, 
ever since the time of the Roman empire, had the privilege of being tried 
by their own superiors. When a cleric was accused, the lay courts were 
incompetent to try him, and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction alone could 
pass sentence on him. In England William the Conqueror had given 
a very wide scope to this privilege, called Benefit of Clergy. There resulted 
many abuses and scandalous impunities. Henry II wished to put a stop 
to this, and, so as to control the clergy, appointed as archbishop of Canter- 
bury his chancellor, Thomas Becket, of Saxon origin, and hitherto the 
most brilliant and most docile of courtiers. Becket at once became an 
entirely different man, austere and inflexible. At a great assembly of 
bishops, abbots and barons, held at Clarendon (1164), the king forced 
the adoption of the Constitutions of that name, which obliged every cleric 
accused of a crime to appear before the ordinary courts of justice, forbade 
every ecclesiastic to leave the kingdom without the royal permission, and 
attributed to the king the holding and revenues of every vacant bishopric 
or benefice. Thomas Becket protested against these statutes, and, to 
escape from his former master's wrath, fled to France. Louis VII having 
reconciled him with Henry, he returned to Canterbury, but did not yield 
a step on the ecclesiastical privileges, so that the king, out of patience, let 
words slip which four knights interpreted as a death sentence. They went 
and murdered the archbishop at the foot of the altar (1170). This crime 
aroused against Henry such indignation that he was obliged to abolish the 
objectionable Constitutions of Clarendon and to do penance at the martyr's 
tomb. He would not have submitted to this humiliation had he not feared 
a popular uprising and an excommunication just as he was threatened 
with war by his three eldest sons, Henry Short Cloak, duke of Maine and 
Anjou, Richard Coeur de Lion, duke of Aquitaine, and GeoflPrey, duke of 
Brittany; and even the fourth, John Lackland, at last joined them. Henry 
II spent his last days in fighting his sons and the king of France, who sup- 



256 The Later Middle Ages in France and England 

ported the rebels. In 1171 he had obtained the nominal submission of the 
east and south of Ireland, but had made no real conquest of the land. 

Richard, John, and Henry III. — Richard, who succeeded him 
(1189-1199), is that Lion-hearted hero of the third Crusade already men- 
tioned. This violent, but brave and chivalrous, prince was succeeded by his 
brother John Lackland, who had all the vices, and not a single good quality, 
not even courage. By a crime, as we have seen, he lost Touraine, Anjou, 
Maine, Normandy and Poitou (i 203-1 205), which Philip Augustus took 
from him, and he madly renewed his father's war with the Church. Having 
refused to accept the prelate whom the Pope had designated for the See of 
Canterbury, he was excommunicated and threatened with an invasion by 
Philip Augustus, whom Innocent III authorized to conquer England. 
Then he humbled himself before the Holy See, promised it tribute, acknowl- 
edged himself as a vassal, and then tried to be avenged for all these humilia- 
tions by forming against France the coalition which the battle of Bouvines 
overthrew. While his allies were vanquished in the north, John himself 
was beaten in Poitou. When he returned to his island, he there found his 
barons in revolt, and they compelled him to sign the Great Charter (1215). 
This memorable act, the foundation of English liberties, guaranteed the 
privileges of the Church, renewed the limits marked out under Henry I 
for the rights of relief, guardianship and marriage, which the kings had 
abused, promised to establish no tax in the kingdom without the consent 
of the common council, and, in the last place, enacted the famous habeas 
corpus law protecting individual liberty and that of the jury which assured 
a just judgment to the accused. A commission of twenty-live barons was 
entrusted with seeing to its being carried out and obliging the king, by all 
means, to reform abuses. The danger having passed, John wished to set 
the Charter aside and prevailed upon the Pope to authorize him to do so, 
an unwise act to which may be traced the anti-Papal movement in England. 
The barons called in against him the son of Philip Augustus, Louis, who 
would have become king of that country if, after John's sudden death 
(12 1 6), the barons had not preferred a child, his son, to the powerful heir 
to the crown of France. 

The new reign began with a long minority. We unceasingly see In it 
weakness, acts of perjury, and fits of violence, all, in a word, that was 
required to give to the nation the need and the means to restrain with 
institutions that royal will so far from sure of itself. Abroad Henry was 
beaten by St. Louis at Taillebourg and at Saintes. His brother, Richard of 
Cornwall, elected emperor, went to play in Germany a ridiculous part that 
was costly to England. At home there was increasing discontent of the 



The Later Middle Ages in France and England 257 

people on account of the repeated violations of the Great Charter, of the 
favor shown to the relatives of Eleonora of Provence, who secured all the 
offices, and of a veritable invasion of Italian clerics, sent by the Pope, 
who monopolized all the ecclesiastical benefices. 

The First English Parliament.— On June 11, 1258, in the great 
national council of Oxford, the first assembly to which the name Parliament 
was officially given, the barons compelled the king to confide reform to 
twenty-four of themselves, of whom twelve only were appointed by him. 
These twenty-four delegates published the Statutes or Provisions of Oxford. 
By them the king confirmed the Great Charter; the twenty-four would 
name every year the high chancellor, the high treasurer, the judges and 
other public officials, the governors of the castles, etc.; it would be a capital 
crime to oppose their decisions; and, lastly, the Parliament would be 
convened every three years. Henry III protested and appealed to the 
arbitration of St. Louis, who decided in his favor. But the barons did 
not accept that judgment, took up arms and attacked the king, under the 
leadership of a grandson of the victor over the Albigenses, Simon de Mont- 
fort, earl of Leicester, and took him prisoner along with his son Edward, 
at the battle of Lewes (1264). Leicester, then ruling in the name of the 
king whom he held captive, organized the first complete representation 
of the English nation, by the ordinance of 1265, which prescribed the 
election to Parliament of two knights for every shire and two citizens or 
burgesses for every city or borough of the said county. 

Under Edward I (1272) the public liberties were respected, and the 
kingdom was enlarged by the conquest of Wales (1274-1284). In Scotland 
Edward defeated in succession the three champions of the independence of 
that country, namely, John Balliol at Dunbar (1297), William Wallace at 
Falkirk (1298), and Robert Bruce. But the latter regained the advantage 
during the reign of the weak Edward II (1307), and by the great victory of 
Bannockburn (1314) Scottish independence. The contemptible Edward 
II let himself be governed by favorites, whom the barons expelled or sent 
to the scaffold. He was himself murdered by his wife (1327). 

These convulsions consolidated the institutions that were, after their 
complete development, for ever to prevent their recurrence. Let us sum up 
these constitutional facts: In 12 15, the Great Charter or declaration of 
public liberties; in 1258, the Statutes of Oxford, making periodical the 
great national council, the guardian of the pact of 1215; in 1264 admittance 
to the Parliament of representatives of the minor nobility and the gentry, 
who were later on to form the lower house or Commons, as the barons, the 
king's immediate vassals, would form the upper house, or the Lords; from 



17 



258 The Later Middle Ages in France and England 

1295 on, regular and constant election of the representatives of the counties 
and the towns; in 1309, the Parliament sets conditions on the voting of 
taxes, so that royalty, necessarily a spender, would be held in check and made 
to respect the laws. Thus, in less than a century, owing to the union of the 
nobility and the gentry, England had laid the foundations which in modern 
times have so firmly borne its fortune and guaranteed its tranquillity. 

France under Philip III and Philip IV. — Immediately after the sad 
death of St. Louis IX at Tunis, his son, Philip III, bore back to France not 
only his father's body, but that of his uncle Alphonse, whose demise gave 
him the county of Toulouse, Rouergue and Poitou, which w^ere added to the 
royal domain. The marriage of his eldest son, afterwards Philip IV, to the 
heiress of Navarre and Champagne, prepared the way, besides, for the 
annexation of these provinces to the crown of France. The massacre known 
as the Sicilian Vespers, which drove the French from Sicily (1282), was the 
cause of a war with Aragon in favor of the French of Naples. It was ended 
(1291) by a treaty which suspended for only a few years a rivalry destined to 
last for several centuries. Six years earlier Philip the Fair had succeeded 
his father, whose reign is very obscure. In 1292 a sailors' quarrel caused 
a rupture with England, of which Philip IV took advantage to get his court 
of peers to decree the confiscation of Guienne. The war was carried on at 
first in Scotland and Flanders, the one being an ally of France and the 
other of England. Against the latter Philip supported the Scottish chiefs, 
Balliol and Wallace, and he occupied Flanders, whose count he sent to the 
tower of the Louvre. 

Philip the Fair, Pope Boniface VIII, and the Templars. — In order 
to provide for the expenses of these wars and of a government growing ever 
more and more complicated, much money was needed. Philip pillaged the 
Jews, raised and lowered the value of the coins according to his needs, and 
taxed the clergy. The then Pope, Boniface VIII, peremptorily raised the 
question of the ecclesiastical immunities. He excommunicated every cleric 
who paid the tax without the permission of the Holy See, and those who had 
established that tax, "no matter who they were" (1296). Philip answered 
by prohibiting the sending of money out of the country without his permis- 
sion, which amounted to intercepting the revenues of the Holy See. The 
great jubilee of the year 1300 misled the Pontiff in regard to his power. He 
sent to Philip as legate the bishop of Pamiers, Bernard Saisset, who grie- 
vously off^ended the king by his haughty demeanor, and Philip had him 
arrested. Immediately the Pope (1301) issued the famous bull "Ausculta, 
Fili," to which Philip gave an impertinent answer. But, feeling the need 



The Later Middle Ages in France and England 259 

of depending on the nation in this struggle, he convened the first assembly 
of the States General (1302), in which the clergy, barons and gentry declared 
in his favor. Boniface repelled this attack v^ith the bull "Unam Sanctam," 
which subordinated the temporal to the spiritual power, and threatened to 
give the throne of France to the emperor of Germany. Thus was the 
quarrel between the Papacy and the empire beginning over again, but now 
it did not last long, and one may measure the weakening of the spiritual 
power by the rapidity of its defeat. At a fresh meeting of the States General 
(1303) the lawyer William de Nogaret accused the Pope of simony, heresy, 
etc. William de Plasian, another lawyer, proposed that the king himself 
convene a general Council and summon Boniface to it. Nogaret went to 
Italy to arrest the Pope, and the Italian, Colonna, by whom he was accom- 
panied, struck the aged Pontiff on the face with his iron gauntlet, and the 
victim soon afterwards died of grief (1303). The king was powerful enough 
to have one of his creatures chosen by the cardinals (1305), first Benedict 
IX and then Clement V, who established the Holy See at Avignon (1309), 
and began that series of Popes living at the mercy of France for seventy 
years (until 1378), a period which has been called the Babylonian captivity 
of the Papacy. Thus were the foundations laid of the system of subor- 
dination of the Church to the State in France known as Gallicanism, a 
system which, by making religion the servant of despotism, is the remote 
cause of the troubles that have recently come upon the Church in that 
country. 

The effect of this new system of dependence was soon shown. From 
Clement V Philip obtained the condemnation of Boniface's memoir and that 
of the order of Templars, a militia devoted to the Holy See, and whose 
immense wealth tempted the king. On the morning of October 13, 1307, 
the Templars were arrested throughout the whole of France, without their 
being able to offer resistance. Indictments were drawn up against them 
in which they were accused of monstrous acts of impiety, and torture wrung 
from them the confessions which it ever wrings. States General convened 
at Tours (1308) declared them deserving of death, and in 1309 fifty-four 
were burned. In 13 14 Jacques Molay, grand master of the Templars, met 
the same fate. 

The Last Direct Capetians and the Salic Law. -While royalty was 
triumphing over the great religious institutions of the Middle Ages, the 
people were beginning the struggle against the barons. The Flemings, 
driven to extremes by the exactions of the governor whom Philip IV had 
imposed on them, had arisen and inflicted on the French nobility the great 
disaster of Courtray (1302), for which Philip the Fair was to take his revenge 



26o The Later Middle Ages in France and England 

by the victory of Mons-en-Puelle (1304); but there remained to him of 
Flanders only Lille, Douai and Orchies. 

Under Louis X le Hutin (the Headstrong), who succeeded in 13 14, a 
feudal reaction took place against the new tendencies of royalty. Two of 
Philip the Fair's ministers were its victims. Upon the death of Louis X 
(13 16), who has attached his name to scarcely anything but an ordinance for 
the enfranchisement by means of money of the serfs of the royal domain, his 
brother Philip assumed the crown to the prejudice of Jeanne, his niece, and 
had the declaration made by the States General that "a woman cannot 
succeed to the kingdom of the Franks, " a rule that became fundamental in 
that monarchy and that has improperly been called the Salic Law. Philip V 
also died without male issue (1322). His brother, Charles IV the Fair, 
succeeded him and in his turn left only a daughter. The crown was then 
given to a nephew of Philip IV, who began the Valois branch of the Cape- 
tians (1328). But Edward III, king of England, through his mother, 
Isabella, a grandson of Philip the Fair, pretended he was the lawful heir; 
and from that claim came the conflict known as the Hundred Years' War, 
which really lasted sixteen years more than a century. 

Beginnings of the Hundred Years* War. — England and France, both 
strong, the one by the growth of the royal power, the other by that of the 
public liberties, were now to find themselves in conflict with each other for 
over a century (1337-1453). This was the Hundred Years' War, which the 
rashness and inexperience of the French nobility made so fruitful of glory 
for England. As grandson of Philip the Fair, Edward III had pretensions 
to the crown of France, for the Salic law had not yet gained the importance it 
was to assume later on. But at the accession of Philip of Valois he seemed 
to have abandoned them, by paying to the new king of France the feudal 
homage he owed for the duchy of Guienne. None the less did he cherish the 
hope of supplanting him, and he was encouraged in this respect by the 
refugee, Robert, despoiled of his county of Artois, and by the Flemings, 
who, needing English wools to supply their industry, and with the brewer, 
Jacques Arteveldt, as their leader, revolted against their count, a friend of 
France, and acknowledged Edward as their lawful king. 

War was begun in 1337, but for nine years was noted for no event of 
prime importance except in 1340 by the naval engagement of the Ecluse (by 
the English called Sluys), which France lost, and it was waged especially 
in Brittany, where Charles of Blois, leader of the French party, disputed 
the ducal crown with Jean de Montfort, supported by the English. The 
death of Jacques Arteveldt, slain in a popular tumult, did not take the 
Flemish alliance away from England, which retained superiority in Flanders 
and Brittany. 



The Later Middle Ages in France and England 261 

The Battles of Crecy and Poitiers. — In 1346 hostilities became more 
serious. Edward invaded France through the peninsula of Cotentin 
(western Normandy), counting on advancing as far as Paris; but scarcity 
of provisions obHged him to turn northwards so as to come into communica- 
tion with Flanders. Philip of Valois, who had sixty thousand men to 
intercept him on the way, did not succeed in preventing him from crossing 
either the Seine or the Somme, and near Crecy engaged in battle with troops 
suffering from fatigue and lack of discipline. The English army, only half 
as numerous, held a good position on an elevation and had cannons, which 
were then used for the first time in a pitched battle, and was protected by a 
thick line of skilled archers. The French knighthood, hurled at random 
against that strong position, was riddled with arrows and covered the battle- 
field with its dead. Edward, victorious, continued his retreat upon Calais, 
which he captured after nearly a year's siege (1347), and which the English 
held for over two centuries. At the same time he obtained important 
advantages in Scotland and Brittany; David Bruce was taken prisoner at 
Nevil's Cross and Charles of Blois at La Roche Derien. 

At the accession of John the Good (1350) France was already in a sad 
plight. A great battle and Calais had been lost; Charles the Bad, king of 
Navarre, was intriguing to secure the right to the throne which he pretended 
to hold from his mother, Jeanne of Evreux, and the States General, con- 
vened in 1355, raised pretensions recalling the Great Charter of England, 
that went farther than it even, since they wished their agents to collect the 
public pennies, supervise their expenditure, tax all orders, etc. The 
nobles refused to submit to the tax, and hatched a plot at the head of which 
was Charles the Bad. John had several of them seized at a feast, at the very 
table of his son Charles, and had them beheaded. The English thought the 
moment favorable for them. Edward sent the duke of Lancaster to Nor- 
mandy and his son and heir, the Black Prince, to Guienne. The latter 
advanced towards the Loire, and, as he was retreating after many ravages, 
he saw his route cut off by King John, who, with his fifty thousand men, 
could surround the enemy's small army. But the masterly position taken 
up by the prince, on the hillside of Maupertuis near Poitiers, and the usual 
rashness of the French nobility, gave him a most complete victory (1356). 
The king himself was made prisoner. 

The Jacquerie and the Treaty of Bretigny. — ^The great disasters of 
Crecy and Poitiers, due to the inexperience of the kings, their generals and 
the nobility, could not but bring on a popular commotion. The king being 
a prisoner along with the majority of the great men of the State, the nation 
took in hand the management of public affairs. The States General, 



262 The Later Middle Ages in France and England 

convened by the Dauphin, Charles, dictated their will through Etienne 
Marcel, mayor of Paris, on behalf of the Third Estate, Robert le Coq, bishop 
of Laon, for the clergy, and Jean de Pecquigny, lord of Vermandois, for the 
nobility. Before granting any subsidy, they demanded the dismissal and 
trial of the chief officials of finance and justice, the establishment of a 
council selected from the three orders and intended to direct the government. 
The States of 1357, bolder still, set up a commission of thirty-six members to 
supervise everything, and caused to be issued the Great Ordinance of 
Reformation, by which the Dauphin pledged himself to impose no tax 
without the vote of the States, to leave the levying and use of it to their 
delegates, to reform justice, to issue no more depreciated money, etc. But 
a political reform with the victorious English looking on was dangerous, 
though it did not go so far, as was afterwards seen, as to overthrow the 
established government. Besides, the reformation ordinance, the work 
of a few intelligent deputies, was neither the doing, nor the thought, nor 
even the desire of France, and when Paris was compelled to take up arms 
in order to uphold and defend what the States had done, not a single arm 
was raised in France to come to its aid — the would-be revolution was only a 
Parisian riot. The Dauphin having tried to shirk the obligations that were 
being imposed upon him, Etienne Marcel had his two ministers, the marshals 
of Champagne and Normandy, murdered before his eyes. These acts of 
violence discredited the popular party, which the horrors committed by the 
Jacques brought into complete disrepute. Marcel, compelled to seek sup- 
port, formed an alliance with Charles the Bad, and was about to turn Paris 
over to him when the alderman Maillard, who had discovered the plot slew 
him. The party fell with him (1358). 

The Dauphin, relieved of Marcel, got rid of Charles of Navarre by the 
treaty of Pontoise, and remained sole master. With the consent of the 
States he annulled a disastrous treaty which John, weary of his captivity, 
had concluded, and signed that of Bretigny (1360), still less favorable. By 
it Edward abandoned his claim to the crown of France, but received in 
direct sovereignty Poitou, Aunis, Angoumois, Saintonge, Limousin, Peri- 
gord, Quercy, Rouergue, Agenois, Bigorre, Ponthieu, Calais, Guines and > 
Ardres. In 1364 John ended that reign so disastrous to France, even in time 
of peace. The duchy of Burgundy having fallen to the crown by the 
extinction of the first ducal house (1361), instead of uniting it to the royal 
domain, he alienated it in favor of his fourth son, Philip the Bold, founder 
of that second ducal house which twice almost destroyed the kingdom. 

Charles V and Duguesclin. — Charles the Wise (1364-1380) extricated 
France from that abyss of hardships. He let foreign invasion exhaust itself 



The Later Middle Ages in France and England 263 

in,ravagings of the country and kept his troops in the strong places, from 
which they harassed the enemy and made revictuaUng impossible to them. 
By the victory of Cocherel (1364) Duguesclin, a minor Breton gentleman 
whom he had taken into his service and later on made constable, freed him of 
Charles the Bad. Less fortunate in Brittany, Duguesclin was defeated and 
taken prisoner at Auray, a defeat which obliged the king to acknowledge 
Jean de Montfort as duke of that province; but he dehvered France from 
the Great Companies by leading them to the aid of the king of Castile, 
Henry Trastamare, against his brother, Pedro the Cruel, whom the English 
supported and whom he succeeded in overthrowing (1369). 

In this year the Gascons, displeased on account of the Black Prince's 
exactions, appealed to Charles V, suzerain of the duke of Aquitaine, and the 
king got the court of peers to decree the confiscation of that great fief. 
Charles V was ready, and Edward was not. But in 1373 a powerful army 
landed at Calais. Once more the English traversed the whole of France as 
far as Bordeaux, but at the end of the journey they found themselves reduced 
to six thousand men. When the Prince of Wales (1376) and Edward III 
(1377) died, they had lost all the fruits of their victories — the English re- 
tained only Bayonne, Bordeaux and Calais. Charles was also successful, 
because he showed like ability, against Charles the Bad, from whom he took 
Montpellier and Evreux; but he failed in an effort to add Brittany to the 
royal domain. Frightened by the memories of his youth, he had avoided 
convening the States General. But he strengthened the parliament (su- 
preme court) by permitting it to fill its own vacancies; he favored letters, 
whose chief representative at that time was Froissart, the inimitable chroni- 
cler, and he began the royal library, which in his time contained nine 
hundred volumes. He died in 1380. 

France under Charles VI— Armagnacs and Burgundians.— The 

struggle between France and England was almost suspended for thirty-five 
years (1380-1415), because of internal troubles. The minority of Charles 
VI handed the government over to his uncles, the dukes of Anjou, Berry, 
Burgundy and Bourbon, who, for entirely selfish purposes, disputed over 
public interests and revenues. The people of Paris, driven to rebellion by 
fresh taxes, murdered the collectors with mallet blows (revolt of the Maillo- 
tins). Rouen, Chalons, Rheims, Troyes and Orleans took a concerted 
part in this communal movement, whose centre was in Flanders, and in 
which for the first time there was a certain mutual understanding. So as 
to strike at the heart of the rebellion, the princes, once the rioting in Paris 
had been suppressed, brought to the banks of the Scheldt the king and an 
army, which inflicted on the Ghenters the bloody defeat of Rosebecque 



264 The Later Middle Ages in France and England 

(1382), in which Philip Arteveldt perished. This success spread terror in 
the rebel cities, and many executions made them return to obedience. But 
the princes learned no lesson from these events. Pilfering of the public pence 
and disorders of every sort continued, and the young king vs^as made to live 
a life of pleasures which his weak mind did not resist. One day as he was 
passing through the forest of Le Mans, on his way to the home of the duke 
of Brittany to prosecute the Sire de Craon, the assassin of the Constable de 
Clisson, he became violently insane (1392). The duke of Burgundy, who 
had just doubled the power of his house by gathering in the rich inheritance 
of the counts of Flanders, and the duke of Orleans, the king's brother, 
disputed about the government. John the Fearless decided the question by 
having his rival assassinated (1407). The count of Armagnac, father-in-law 
of the new duke of Orleans, of him who later on became a graceful poet, 
assumed the leadership of the faction, with which a part of the nobility 
became connected, and which took his name (1410). The duke of Bur- 
gundy, on the contrary, depended on the cities, and a civil war, marked by 
abominable cruelties, broke out. John the Fearless flattered Paris, and 
especially the populace, whose ferocious passions he let loose. The 
butchers' faction, whose leader was a skinner named Caboche, inundated 
the city with the blood of the Armagnacs or of those who were so called, 
nobles, bishops and magistrates. The duke, one of the Royals of France, 
encouraged this hideous demagoguery — one day he shook hands with the 
executioner Capeluche. But the Cabochian Ordinance for the reform of 
the kingdom, the work of the able men of the party, and especially of the 
University, is remarkable. It did not last very long, however; the Armagn- 
acs, recalled to Paris in 1413 by the moderates, abolished it. Two years 
later the Hundred Years' War was resumed. 

Unrest in England — Wycliffe. — England had been no less disturbed, 
for a great effervescence was then stirring western Europe. The people 
everywhere had become irritated against a social order that was overwhelm- 
ing them with so many forms of wretchedness, and the burgesses of the 
towns, enriched by a beginning of industry and commerce, wished to shelter 
their happiness from the caprices, rapine and acts of violence of the power- 
ful. Some laid violent hands even on the affairs of the Church. In 1366 
Pope Urban V claimed thirty-three thousand marks from England, the 
arrearages of the tribute which John Lackland had promised to the Holy 
See. The Paliament refused to comply, and a secular priest, John Wyc- 
liffe, took advantage of the public indignation to attack, in the name of 
apostolic equality, the whole hierarchy of the Church, and, in the name 
of the Gospel, the dogmas, sacraments and rites which are not expressly 



The Later Middle Ages in France and England 265 

defined in the New Testament writings. The translation of the Bible into 
English attributed to him, but much of which is of earlier date and some by 
other later hands, rapidly spread these ideas, which, according to some his- 
torians, had already been taught by a certain Walter Lollard (or Lolhard), 
burned at Cologne in 1322. However this may be, Wycliffe's followers in 
England came to be called Lollards. One of them tried to carry out the 
political consequences of his teaching. John Ball traversed the cities and 
towns, saying to the poor: 

When Adam delved and Eve span, 

Where was then the gentleman .? 
These dangerous ideas made their way everywhere. They were in the 
minds of those who, about the same time, stirred up riots in Rouen, Rheims, 
Chalons, Troyes, Orleans and Paris, the insurrection of the White Caps in 
Flanders, and that of the Tuchins (socialists) of Languedoc. So ever appear 
forerunning signs of great storms. The spontaneous revolts of the end of 
the fourteenth century against the twofold feudalism, lay and ecclesiastical, 
of the Middle Ages were but the precursors of the studied revolt of Luther 
and Calvin in the sixteenth as regards religio-political ideas, and of the 
whole world in the eighteenth. 

Revolution in England, and Renewed War with France. — In 138 1, 

four years after the accession to the throne of the Black Prince's son, Richard 
II, at the age of eleven, sixty thousand men reached the gates of London, 
demanding the abolition of serfage, freedom to sell and buy at markets and 
fairs, and, what was very unreasonable, reduction of incomes to a uniform 
scale. They were paid with fine promises. When they had scattered, 
fifteen hundred of them were hanged, and everything relapsed into the old 
order. The young king had three uncles as ambitious and greedy as those 
of Charles VI of France. They put themselves at the head of the opposition 
against Richard, who got rid of the most turbulent of them, the duke of 
Gloucester, by having him assassinated. Many of the nobility perished or 
were exiled, and England bowed her head under the terror. One of those 
banished, Henry of Lancaster, the grandson of Edward III through his 
third son, John of Gaunt, organized a vast conspiracy. Richard was 
abandoned by everybody, and the Parliament deposed him "for having 
violated the lavv^s and privileges of the nation" (1399)- Thus had England 
at that time, owing to its Parliament, come to forming one people, and to 
taking up again the old idea of a national right higher than dynastic right. 
The following year Richard perished, assassinated in prison. 

Henry IV spent his reign of fourteen years in securing the crown to 
his house. On his deathbed he advised his son to renew the war against 



266 The Later Middle Ages in France and England 

France, so as to keep his turbulent barons busy. In 1415 Henry V was in 
France, and repeated at Azincourt the glorious exploits of Crecy and Poi- 
tiers. This defeat, again due to the temerity of the French nobility, over- 
threw the Armagnac government, and the Burgundians (1418) returned to 
Paris, which they again deluged with blood. When the English archers and 
men-at-arms had put their booty in safety beyond the Channel, they returned 
to the war feast, methodically pillaging Normandy and taking its cities 
one after another. In 1419 Rouen fell into their hands. The assassination 
of John the Fearless at the Montereau bridge served their interests further, 
for that murder, authorized by the Dauphin, threw the new duke of Bur- 
gundy, Philip the Good, into the English party. Henry V, master of Paris 
and of the person of Charles VI, had himself acknowledged by the treaty of 
Troyes as heir of the French king, whose daughter he married (1420). She 
was destined to take revenge for France, by transmitting his grandfather's 
imbecility to the son whom she bore to Henry V. 

Charles VII and Joan of Arc. — Henry and Charles died the same year 
(1422). There were then two kings in France, the Englishman Henry VI 
at Paris, and the Valois Charles VII south of the Loire. The petty court of 
the latter, whom the English in derision called the King of Bourges, thought 
only of the pleasures and intrigues of the courtiers, from whom the Con- 
stable de Richemont strove in vain to free the king. The defeats of Crevant- 
sur-Yonne (1423) and Verneuil (1424) drove Charles's armies from Bur- 
gundy and Normandy, and in 1428 the English, whose affairs the regent, 
Bedford, had ably managed, besieged Orleans, the key to the south. The 
disgraceful Herring Day (1429) completed the discouragement of the French 
party, and Charles VII was already thinking of withdrawing into the south 
when Joan of Arc appeared. This young girl, born at Domremy, on the 
Lorraine frontier, presented herself at court, having, she said, the mission of 
delivering Orleans and getting the king crowned at Rheims. Her virtues 
and enthusiasm enforced belief in her. The most valiant captains followed 
her into Orleans (1429), and ten days later the Enghsh evacuated their 
positions. Then she won the battle of Patay, where Talbot was taken 
prisoner, and led the king to Rheims. After the coronation she wished to 
retire; she remained against her will, and in May, 1430, while defending 
Compiegne against the English, she fell into their hands. They burned 
her at Rouen as a sorceress (May 30, 1431)- 

Reforms and Successes of Charles VII. — That crime marked the end 
of their good fortune. Seeing their reverses, the duke of Burgundy remem- 
bered he was a Frenchman, and by the treaty of Arras (1435) he sold his 



The Later Middle Ages in France and England 267 

desertion. It was necessary to give him the cities on the Somme, the coun- 
ties of Auxerre, Macon, etc., with exemption from all homage, which really 
made him king in his own fiefs. The following year Paris opened its gates. 
Charles VII, transformed by misfortune, and ably seconded by Jean de 
Breze, seneschal of Normandy, the chancellor Juvenal, the silversmith 
Jacques Coeur, and the brothers Bureau, who organized the artillery, to 
say nothing of Dunois, Lahire and Xaintrailles, triumphed everywhere, 
and in 1444 the English, persuaded by the cardinal of Winchester, concluded 
with France a two years' truce, sealed by the marriage of Henry VI to 
Margaret of Anjou. At the same time Charles suppressed a revolt of the 
barons, already frightened at the progress of his authority (Praguerie). 
A measure that inflicted the most serious blow on feudal power was the 
creation of a standing army by the organizing of fifteen ordnance companies 
and of the free archers. The States of Orleans (1439) ^^^ suggested the 
idea and, to carry it out, had voted a perpetual poll-tax. Charles VII, 
counting on this thoroughly national military force, got rid of the troopers 
who were devastating France; some of them he sent to Lorraine, and the 
rest he gave to the Dauphin, to fight the Swiss. 

These reforms accomplished, Charles felt strong enough to close matters 
with the English (1449). The battle of Formigny (1450) drove them from 
Normandy, and that of Castillon (1453) from Guienne. Calais alone they 
retained. This was the end of that Hundred Years' War which had 
accumulated so many evils on France and in England had strengthened the 
public liberties by the dependence which the kings, even when victorious, 
had to place in the Parliament so as to obtain the money and the men 
necessary for their expeditions on the Continent. During this period the 
two peoples had, then, once more advanced in the diflPerent directions in 
which we have seen them start. Amid the ruins of France royalty was going 
to find absolute power, and, in spite of the glory of Crecy, Poitiers and 
Azincourt, the English kings had become accustomed to submit to the laws 
of their country's representatives in Parliament assembled. 



CHAPTER XVII 



Middle Ages in Southern and Central Europe 



Intestine Quarrels in Spain. — Instead of continuing the struggle and 
driving into the sea the Moors now shut up in the Alpujarras, as the Chris- 
tians had but recently been in the Pyrenees, the Spanish kings forgot the 
Crusade that had made their fortune, and yielded to the temptation of tak- 
ing a hand in the affairs of Europe. Navarre, w^hich had not been able to 
gain territory by the religious v^^ar, looked northv^ard, in the direction of 
France, and gave itself to the Capetians v^ith its heiress, who married Phil- 
ip the Fair. Alfonso X, king of Castile (1252), wished to be emperor of 
Germany. While he was spending much money on this fruitless candi- 
dacy, the rival houses of Castro, Lara and Haro were disturbing the king- 
dom and went so far as to seek aid from the Moors. Threatened with 
an insurrection, the king himself asked for the support of the Merinides. 
The nation declared him forfeit of the throne, and put in his place his 
second son, Don Sanchez, a brave soldier (1282). Yet Alfonso X was 
surnamed the Wise. He knew astronomy, and published the code of 
the Siete Partidas (Six Chapters). In that code he had wished to intro- 
duce the law of representation, in force in the feudal States, but not in 
Spain. By virtue of that law the throne fell to the sons of Ferdinand 
de la Cerda, Alfonso X's eldest son, who had died before his father. San- 
chez availed himself of the old law. He pretended to succeed to the crown, 
and, with the aid of the nation, obtained it in 1284. This occasioned 
hostilities with the king of France, the dispossessed young princes' uncle. 
The stormy minorities of Ferdinand IV and Alfonso XI again caused 
trouble in Castile. The latter of these princes made himself illustrious, 
however, by a great victory on the Rio Salado over the third African in- 
vasion, that of the Merinides. After him Pedro the Cruel and h s brother 
Henry Trastamare disputed the throne with each other, and, with the 
aid of Dugueschn, it remained with the latter, after he had stabbed his 
brother, taken prisoner in the battle of Montiel. Henry III (1390) tried 
to repress the Castilian nobility, who, under John II and Henry IV, were 
really masters of the country and the court. Royalty rose again only 
268 



I 



Middle Ages in Southern and Central Europe 269 

in the second half of the -fifteenth century, under Isabella and Ferdinand 
the Catholic, as will be seen farther on. 

While these divisions were impeding the progress of Castile, Aragon 
was acquiring Roussillon, Cerdagne and the lordship of Montpellier, was 
interfering (12 13) in the affairs of the Albigenses (battle of Muret, where 
Pedro II perished), was accepting Sicily after the Sicilian Vespers, was 
holding on to it in spite of the terms of the treaty of Anagni, and was add- 
ing Sardinia to its possessions. In 1410 the glorious house of Barcelo- 
na became extinct; all the crowns it had possessed were transferred to a 
prince of Castile who left two sons, namely, Alfonso V, whose adoption by 
Joanna of Naples made him king of tho Two Sicilies, and John II, who 
temporarily united Navarre with Aragon by poisoning his son-m-law, 
Don Carlos de Viana. It was for this abominable man's successor that 
it was reserved to bring about, by his marriage with Isabella of Castile 
(1469), the unity and greatness of Spain. 

Feudalism in Castile and Aragon. — The feudal regime, with all 
its hierarchy, was not really estabhshed in Castile. Amid the uncer- 
tainties of the struggle against the Moors, lords and cities, fighting separate- 
ly, had acquired independence and fortified themselves in their castles 
(castile) or behind their walls. Many of these cities obtained fueros, 
that is, charters of liberties, and in them the king had only an officer (regi- 
dor) entrusted with a general supervision. Yet there were three classes 
in Castile, the ricos hombres or large land( wners, the caballeros or 
hidalgos, minor nobility, exempt from taxes on condition of serving on 
horseback, and the pecheros or taxables, forming the gentry. As every- 
body had fought in the holy war, there were no serfs as in the feudal coun- 
tries, end the separation between the classes was less distinct than else- 
where. From 1 1 69 on, the representatives of the cities were admitted 
into the Cortes. 

Aragon had more of the feudal system, perhaps on account of the for- 
mer Carolingian domination in the March of Barcelona. There the 
ricos hombres received baronies, which they divided and subinfeodated; 
and after them came the mesnadarios, less important vassals, the in- 
fanzones, simple gentlemen, and the common people. These were the 
four orders of the country represented in the Cortes. But Aragon, Cata- 
lonia and Valencia had each its separate Cortes, and the royal authority 
was very much Hmited by the jurisdiction of the high justiza. 

Progress of Portugal. — Portugal, at the extremity of Europe, was 
opening up new paths for itself. John I, head of the house of Avis, which 



270 Middle Ages in Southern and Central Europe 

in 1383 took place of the extinct house of Burgundy, saved first, by the 
victory of Aljubarotta (1385), the independence of Portugal against the 
pretensions of Castile, and then turned his people's attention tov^ards Africa- 
in 1415 he conquered Ceuta. His youngest son, Henry, learned from this 
expedition that Portugal had a future only in the direction of the sea, as 
the land w^as closed against it by Castile. He settled at the village of 
Sagres, on Cape St. Vincent, called thither sailors and geographers, 
founded a nautical academy there, and then sent out navigators on 
the ocean. In 141 7 they discovered Porto Santo, one of the Madeira 
islands, where the prince had Cyprus vines and Sicilian sugar-cane planted. 
Pope Martin V granted him the right of sovereignty over all the lands 
that might be found from the Canaries to the Indies, w^ith a plenary in- 
dulgence for those who perished on these expeditions. A great increase 
of zeal followed. In 1433 Cape Bojador was passed, and then Capes 
Blanco and Verde (1450). The Azores were found. Men were on the 
way to the Cape of Good Hope, which in half a century was to be rounded 
by the Portuguese navigator, Vasco da Gama. 

The House of Anjou in Naples. — Amid the combats that had been 
waged for universal mastery by the two supreme powers of Christendom, 
the pope and the emperor, Italy, the theatre and victim of the struggle, 
had not been able to win independence. When the empire and the Papacy 
declined, it seemed as if it was at last about to become master of its own 
destinies, but such was not the case. It retained the habit of intestine 
discords and that of getting the foreigner to take a hand in its quarrels; 
but once more was then seen what had taken place in the stormy cities 
of ancient Greece. Italy, covered with republics at war with one another 
and often each against itself, shone with a bright splendor of civilization 
that was the first revival of literature and art. The death of Frederick 
II (1250) had marked the end of German domination in Italy. But at 
Naples he had left a son, Manfred, who, backed by his talents, his alHance 
with the Podestas of Lombardy, and the aid of the Saracens of Lucera, 
first braved the Pope's ill will. Alexander IV, it is true, had then been 
driven from Rome by Brancaleone, who had for a moment restored the 
Roman republic. Urban IV, bent on extirpating "the race of vipers," 
had recourse to the foreigner. He gave the crown of Naples to Charles 
of Anjou, brother of St. Louis, on condition that he would do homage to 
the Holy See, pay an annual tribute of eight million ounces of gold, and 
cede Benevento. Charles pledged himself besides, never to unite with 
that kingdom the imperial crown, Lombardy, or Tuscany (1265). Man- 
fred was defeated and slain, and the Pope's legate had the corpse of the 



Middle Ages in Southern and Central Europe 271 

excommunicated prince cast into the Garigliano. A grandson of Fred- 
erick II, Conradin, came from Germany to claim that part of the paternal 
heritage. Defeated and captured at TagHacozzo, by order of Charles of 
Anjou he was decapitated, along with his friend, Frederick of Austria, and 
with him the great house of Suabia became extinct (1268). 

The victor strengthened his power in the kingdom of Naples by execu- 
tions, and, in spite of his promises, he made himself master of nearly the 
whole of Italy, with the various titles of Imperial Vicar, Senator of Rome, 
Pacificator, etc. He dreamt of a still vaster fortune, and thought of rest- 
ing in his own favor the Latin empire of Constantinople, which had recently 
fallen. Turned aside for some time from this scheme by the Tunis Crusade 
(1270) and by the opposition of Popes Gregory X and Nicholas III, he was 
at last about to carry it into execution when the Sicilian Vespers (1282) 
gave Sicily to Pedro III, king of Aragon, one of the accomplices in the 
great plot whose leader was the physician Procida. Then began that 
pitiless ambitious man's chastisement. The admiral Roger de Loria burned 
his fleet; his son, Charles the Lame, was taken prisoner in a fresh naval 
battle, while his ally, the king of France, was driven from Aragon. A treaty 
concluded in 1288 assured Sicily to a son of the Aragonian; but in 1310 
Pope Clement V found a recompense for the house of Anjou by placing one 
of its members on the throne of Hungary. 

Italian Republics — Guelphs and Ghibellines. — During this conflict 
in the south the petty States in the north, rid at one and the same time 
of both German and Sicilian domination, were a prey to continual revolu- 
tions. In Lombardy the governments turned to princeship or to tyranny, in 
Tuscany to democracy, at Venice to aristocracy, and in the Romagna to all 
these three diff"erent forms of government. In 1297 Venice limited eligibility 
for the Grand Council to the noble families of the councillors then in 
office, a measure that, a little later on, completed the closing of the Golden 
Book or register of the Venetian nobility, and the establishment of the 
Council of Ten. In 1282 Florence raised the Minor Arts (lower trades) 
almost to the level of the Major Arts, by constituting an executive council 
or Lordship, made up of Priors of all the arts. Inequality was even decreed 
against the nobles, who could not be admitted to public offices unless they 
unnobled themselves. Soon afterwards the population was divided into 
twenty companies under as many gonfaloniers commanded by a supreme 
gonfalonier. This organization passed without much change into most of 
the cities of Tuscany, such as Lucca, Pistoia, Pisa and Arezzo, and even to 
Genoa. But it was not a cause of good understanding. Genoa, which dis- 
puted with Pisa about Corsica and Sardinia, destroyed the military power 



272 Middle Ages in Southern and Central Europe 

of the Pisans in the great naval battle of La Meloria (1284). Immediately 
all Tuscany pounced on the unfortunate vanquished city. Florence, Lucca, 
Siena, Pistoia and Volterra wrested spoils from it. It resisted for some time 
by confiding power to the too famous Ugolino. When he and his four 
children had perished in the Tower of Hunger, downcast Pisa continued 
to live only by abandoning all ambition. Florence was then mistress of 
Tuscany, but it turned its arms against itself. Under the name of Ghibel- 
lines and Guelphs, the factions there waged bitter war on each other. The 
great Florentine poet, Dante, the father of the Italian language, an exile 
from his country, mourned over these disorders, and sought everywhere a 
power capable of restoring peace to Italy. He found it neither in the 
Papacy, a captive at Avignon, nor in the emperor, to whom Italy was merely 
a country to be turned to advantage. Henry VII went to it (13 10) only 
to make the cities pay ransom. Louis of Bavaria, who appeared there in 
1327, did no better. John of Bohemia, a little later, sold to the highest 
bidder what remained of the old imperial rights. The tribune Rienzi, 
full of the memories of antiquity, to which men then recurred, tried (1347) 
to restore liberty to Rome, and to make it the guardian of ItaHan indepen- 
dence. There he set up the Good State, but aroused only an ephemeral 
enthusiasm which could not triumph over local passions or the terror 
caused by the Black Death or Florence Pestilence, of which Boccaccio has 
left us a picture in his Decameron (1348). Rienzi was murdered by that 
same people of Rome which had so often applauded him, and peace and 
order were restored only by the Papal legate, Albornoz. 

Return of the Papacy to Rome — the Principalities. — Warned by 
the revolution of 1347 of the discontent caused by his absence, the Pope at 
last returned to Rome in 1378. But, robbed of the powder and prestige 
which he had had of old, he was incapable of giving repose to Italy, where 
revolutions continued. In Florence a wool carder, Michael Lando, turned 
the government over (1378) to the lower trades, to the Ciompi (comrades), 
equally hostile to the major arts, the higher class directed by the Albizzi, and 
to the minor arts, the middle class, at whose head the Medici appeared. 
Venice and Genoa, rivals in commerce, waged against each other the war 
known as that of Chiozza (1378), which Venice, at first besieged even in 
its lagoons, brought to a close with the destruction of the Genoese fleet. 
On land it enslaved Padua and Vicenza, but at least it did not ruin them, 
as Florence had utterly ruined Pisa. In Lombardy able leaders, taking 
advantage of civil discords, transformed the republics into principalities. 
Thus did Matteo Visconti at Milan, Can Grande della Scala at Verona, 
Castruccio Castracani at Lucca. In 1396 Giovanni Galeas Visconti 



Middle Ages in Southern and Central Europe 273 

purchased from the emperor Wenceslas the titles of duke of Milan and 
count of Pavia, with supreme authority over twenty-six Lombard cities. 
The condottieri, another scourge of Italy, delivered everything to the first 
ambitious man who knew how to lead them or could pay them, and substi- 
tuted their unpatriotic bands for the national militia. One of them a 
former peasant, Sforza Attendolo, put himself at the service of Filippo Maria 
Visconti, married his daughter, and, at his death, seized the duchy of Milan 
(1450). Northern Italy fell under the sword of a mercenary, Florence 
bowed its head to the yardstick of a prosperous merchant, Cosmo de Medici, 
who supplanted the Albizzi, and, with the aid of that same Sforza, whose 
banker he was, set up in his city a like rule, though less despotic, but more 
brilliant. The call to liberty which the Roman Porcaro made to the 
peninsula in 1453 awakened no response. 

Nor was there any hope for the salvation of Italy to be expected from 
the Neapolitan kingdom, which was a prey to interminable wars of preten- 
ders. Against the guilty Joanna, queen of Naples, Urban VI had called in 
Charles of Duras, son of the king of Hungary, offering to him the kingdom 
of the Two Sicilies, while Joanna recognized as her successor Duke Louis, 
of the second house of Anjou. Charles, victorious in 1381, had Joanna 
smothered under mattresses, and for some time exerted a serious influence 
in Italy. But, when he had perished in Hungary, the kingdom of Naples 
relapsed into anarchy, disputed as it was in succession by the Angevin, 
Hungarian and Aragonese princes. Alfonso V of Aragon, adopted by 
Joanna II, won in the end (1442). 

Brilliance of Literature and Art.— In spite of this sad political 
condition, Italy shone in literature, art, commerce and industry. Its 
language, already formed at the court of Frederick II, was fixed by the pen 
of Dante (Divina Commedia), who died in 132 1; of Petrarch (canzones and 
sonnets), who died in 1374; and of Boccaccio (Decameron), who died in 
1375. It welcomed the emigrant Greeks, and its scholars, Petrarch, 
Chrysoloras, Poggio Bracciolini and Leonardo Bruni, gave the signal 
for the search for manuscripts and for the revival of ancient literature. 
Pope Nicholas V founded the Vatican Library, and Cosmo de Medici 
the Cosmeo-Laurentian, and the latter had Plato commented by Marsilio 
Ficino. Venice had its church of St. Mark (1071), Pisa its famous duomo 
(1063), its baptistery (1152), its leaning tower (1174), and its Campo 
Santo gallery (1278); and Florence had its churches of St. Francis of Assisi, 
Santa Croce, Santa Maria del Fiore (thirteenth century), and that admirable 
duomo of Brunelleschi in front of which Michael Angelo wished to be 
buried. Cimabue, Giotto and Masaccio were opening the great era of 

18 



274 Middle Ages in Southern and Central Europe 

painting. Venice had thirty-five thousand sailors at the close of the thir- 
teenth century, and was carrying on all the trade of Egypt, as was Genoa 
that of Asia Minor, the Dardanelles and the Black Sea (colony of Caffa). 
Milan was a great industrial city in the centre of a very rich country; 
Florence was manufacturing eighty thousand pieces of cloth a year, and 
Verona twenty thousand. Canals fertilized Lombardy; and banks or 
luond kept money in circulation. No other European State was so far 
advanced in civilization, but no country was so divided ;consequently 
it possessed much wealth that aroused the greed of other countries, and 
not a single citizen, not a single soldier, to defend it. 

The German Interregnum and the House of Hapsburg.— The 
imperial authority had exhausted itself in Italy, instead of using its strength 
in subjecting Germany to discipline. After the death of Frederick II the 
latter country had twenty-three years of anarchy (i 250-1 273), years that are 
called the Great Interregnum, because the crown, disdained by the German 
princes and sought by foreign or powerless competitors, such as William 
of Holland, Richard of Cornwall, and Alfonso X, king of Castile, was as it 
were vacant. During this eclipse of supreme authority the kings of Den- 
mark, Poland and Hungary and the vassals of the kingdom of Burgundy 
freed themselves from the imperial suzerainty; the minor nobility and the 
cities mediatized themselves; and the barons built keeps that became 
robbers' dens. So as to guarantee their inheritances against these plans 
for violence, the inferior lords formed confederations (ganerbinats), and the 
cities followed their example (League of the Rhine). About the same period 
(1241) there came into existence the Teutonic Hansa, a commercial union 
whose chief seats were Lubeck, Cologne, Brunswick and Dantzig, and 
principal marts London, Bruges, Berghen and Novgorod. In the rural 
districts many serfs made themselves free or went to seek shelter in the 
suburbs of the cities. The Great Interregnum came to an end by the 
election of Rudolph of Hapsburg, a poor baron who seemed far from 
formidable to the electors (1273). Abandoning Italy, which he called the 
Lion's Den, he concerned himself especially with Germany, defeated and 
slew in the Markfeld (1278) the king of Bohemia, Ottocar II, who had 
refused him homage, recovered some of the usurpations made since Fred- 
erick II, forbade private wars, made the States of Franconia, Suabia, 
Bavaria and Alsace swear public peace, and destroyed a number of castles. 
While thus working for the peace of the empire, he founded the power of his 
house by giving to his sons, Albert and Rudolph, the investiture of the 
duchies of Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola. 

The Hapsburgs had domains in Switzerland, and their bailifs were 



Middle Ages in Southern and Central Europe 275 

severe on those mountaineers. In 1307 the cantons of Schwytz, Uri and 
Unterwalden united to put an end to this violence (legend of William Tell). 
Albert having been assassinated by his nephew as he was on his way across 
the Reuss to put down the revolt, it was the duke of Austria, Leopold, who 
lost against them the battle of Morgarten (13 15), by which the Swiss founded 
their independence and their military renown. To the three primitive 
cantons were added those of Luzern, Zurich, Claris, Zug and Bern (1332- 
1353). The victories of Sempach (1386) and Naefels (1388) consolidated 
Helvetian liberty. 

The Emperors Powerless. — ^The German princes who now disposed 
of the crown wished to give it only to poor gentlemen, in order that the 
emperor might not be in a position to demand an accounting from them. 
It was for this reason they elected Henry VII of Luxemburg (1308). Louis 
IV of Bavaria (13 14) was of a stronger house, but, excommunicated by 
Pope John XXII, and menaced by the king of France, then all-powerful, 
he was about to abdicate a title which only made him weary when the 
princes, ashamed of the position in which they had placed their elect, drew 
up the Pragmatic Sanction of Frankfort, which declared that the Pope had 
no right over the empire or the emperor. The reign of Charles IV (1346- 
1378) is remarkable only for that thrifty prince's greed turning everything 
into money, "plucking and bartering away the imperial eagle like a real 
dealer at a fair." But he published (1356) the Golden Bull defining the 
elective system of Germany, consisting of seven electors, three of them 
ecclesiastical, namely, the archbishops of Mayence, Cologne and Treves, 
and four lay, the king of Bohemia, the Count Palatine, the duke of Saxony 
and the margrave of Brandenburg — a system which also perpetuated 
German disunion. Wencelas (1378) dishonored the imperial throne with 
vulgar vices, and was deposed (1400). Under Sigismund (1410) the 
Council of Constance assembled and the Hussite war broke out. This 
Council, convened in 1414 to put an end to the schism caused by the almost 
simultaneous election of two Popes in 1378 (the Great Schism of the West), 
the one living at Rome and the other at Avignon, and to reform the Church, 
effected only with difficulty the former object, and the latter not at all; 
but it sent to the stake (141 5) John Huss, rector of the university of Prague, 
who, having adopted the teachings of Wycliffe, attacked the ecclesiastical 
hierarchy, auricular confession, the veneration of images, etc. The victim's 
followers, or Hussites, taking advantage of the general disaffection of 
the Bohemians against Germany, rebelled under the leadership of a blind 
general, John Ziska (the one-eyed). All Bohemia was soon aflame, and 
one of the bitterest wars on record raged for fifteen years. 



2 76 Middle Ages in Southern and Central Europe 

Upon the death of Sigismund (1438), the Hapsburgs again ascended the 
imperial throne, which they retained until the empire fell (1806). Albert 
II died (1439) during a war against the Turks, and his posthumous son, 
Ladislas, inherited only Bohemia and Hungary. But another Austrian 
prince succeeded him on tVe imperial throne, Frederick III, of the Styrian 
branch, the last emperor to be crowned at Rome (1452). Moreover, this 
title did not even give a shadow of power, for the head of the empire had, as 
emperor, neither revenues, nor domains, nor military forces, nor judiciary 
power except in certain cases, and his right of veto against the decisions 
of the diet was most frequently illusory. This assembly, divided into three 
colleges, electors, princes and cities, was the real government of Germany, 
but it governed as little as possible, and in reality scarcely governed at all 
the seven or eight hundred States of which the empire was composed. 
With the Germanic system Hungary was connected, and Hungary was then 
Europe's bulwark against the Turks. Momentarily united to Austria 
during the reign of Sigismund (1392), it was separated from it under 
Vladislas, king of Poland, who was defeated and slain at Varna by the 
Ottomans (1444). Under the young Ladislas, of the house of Austria, 
John Hunnyad, voyvode of Transylvania and regent of the kingdom, for 
a long time arrested the progress of the infidels. 

Scandinavia and Poland. — In Scandinavia there were three kingdoms, 
Denmark, Sweden and Norway. These countries, from which the pagan 
Northmen had set out, had been converted to Christianity in the tenth and 
eleventh centuries. Denmark was powerful under Knut the Great, who 
reigned also over England, and under the two brothers, Knut VI and Walde- 
mar the Victorious (1182-1241), who conquered Holstein and Nordalbingia. 
Waldemar had great revenues, a fine fleet and a numerous army. He 
published the Code of Scania, and Danish students went to the university 
of Paris in search of knowledge. Sweden attained to power later, under the 
dynasty of the Folkungs, which founded Stockholm (1254). Norway owed 
long troubles to the elective character of its royalty, which became hereditary 
only in 1263. In 1397, under Margaret, daughter of Waldemar III, king 
of Denmark, it was stipulated by the Union of Calmar that the three northern 
kingdoms would form a permanent confederacy under one and the same 
sovereign, each retaining its special legislation, its constitution and its 
senate. This union, a condition of their greatness and security, unfortun- 
ately did not last. After the death of the Semiramis of the North (1412), 
it was shaken by the rebellion of Schleswig and Holstein, and was broken 
in 1448 by the Swedes, who then took a king of their own. Denmark and 
Norway remained united. 



Middle Ages in Southern and Central Europe 277 

The Slav States between the Baltic and the Black Sea furnish very 
little history before the ninth century. The Polenes or Poles (people of 
the plain), on the banks of the Vistula and the Oder, had as their first duke 
Piast, founder of a dynasty that reigned at first under the suzerainty of 
the German empire. Boleslas I Chrobri (the Intrepid, 992) freed himself 
from this tutelage and assumed the title of king. Boleslas III the Victorious 
(1102-1138) subdued the Pomeranians. But after him Silesia seceded, and 
the Teutonic Knights, called in to the aid of Poland against the Borussians 
or Prussians, an idolatrous people that sacrificed human victims, organized 
between the Vistula and the Niemen a new State that soon became a danger- 
ous enemy. Poland was obliged to cede Pomerania and Dantzig to them 
(1343); but it made good for this under Casimir the Great by the conquest 
of Red Russia, Volhynia and Podolia, and carried its frontier as far as the 
Don (1333-1370). Under this wise prince, however, arose the custom of 
capitulations (Pacta Conventa), imposed on the nobility by the new kings, 
and the origin of that anarchy which in the end handed the Poles over to their 
enemies. The election of Jagiello, grand duke of Lithuania (1386), made 
Poland the preponderant State in eastern Europe. In I410 he took several 
provinces from the Teutonic Knights, whom the treaty of Thorn (1466) 
reduced to East Prussia. 

Mongols in Russia, and Turks at Constantinople. — Russia, which 
later on was to devour Poland, was as yet but of small importance. We have 
seen that Norse pirates led by Rurik had gone and given their services to the 
powerful city of Novgorod, which they afterwards took possession of as 
masters (862). Gradually extending, they went down along the Borysthenes 
Dnieper, intending to go and seek lucrative service or adventures at Con- 
stantinople. On the way they captured Kief, and in the following century 
were converted to Byzantine Christianity. In the eleventh century the 
grand duchy of Kief was already a respectable power. In the twelfth 
supremacy passed to the grand duchy of Wladimir, but in the following 
century Russia was invaded by the Mongols or Tartars under Genghis 
Khan, who in 1223 fought a battle in which six Russian princes perished. 
Batu captured Moscow in 1237, and advanced as far as Novgorod. The 
grand duchy of Kief ceased to exist, and that of Wladimir paid tribute. 
After Russia Poland, Silesia, Moravia and Hungary were conquered or 
devastated. Even the Danube was crossed, and for a moment Europe 
trembled. The Mongols at last stopped before the mountains of Bohemia 
and Austria; but Russia remained under their yoke for two centuries. 

During the same epoch another invasion, less demonstrative, but more 
tenacious, took place to the south of the Black Sea. Coming down from the 



278 Middle Ages in Southern and Central Europe 

Altai or "mountain of gold," the Turks had invaded India, Persia, Syria 
and Asia Minor. The chief of one of their smallest tribes, Othman, seized 
Prusa (1325), and his son, Orkhan, Nicomedia, Nicaea, and Gallipoli on the 
European shore of the Hellespont. Murad I gave to these Turks a formid- 
able army by instituting the Janissaries, recruited from young Christians 
taken as prisoners or as tribute and reared in the Mohammedan religion. 
Allotments of land called timars were assigned to them; and the obligation 
of celibacy and a life in common gave them some resemblance to a military 
order. Before making a direct attack on Constantinople, the sultans w^ent 
beyond it. Murad captured Adrianople and attacked the valiant peoples of 
Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia and Albania. Victorious at Cassova, he perished 
by assassination on the battlefield (1389). But his successor gathered in the 
fruits of this victory. Macedonia and Bulgaria submitted, and Wallachia 
acknowledged Turkish suzerainty. 

On the banks of the Danube Bajazet I met a European Crusade, with 
Sigismund commanding it. A multitude of French knights formed a part of 
it, and among them was John the Fearless. These brilliant barons lost 
everything by their presumptuous rashness in the battle of Nicopolis (1396) 
More effective aid came to the Greeks from an unexpected quarter. Timur 
or Tamerlane had just revived the domination of Genghis Khan and 
extended his destructive sway from the Ganges to the Tana is (Don). The 
emperor of Constantinople and some Seljukians called him in against 
Bajazet, whom the great battle of Ancyra (Angora) delivered into his 
enemy's hands (1402). But the rapid disappearance of the new Mongol 
empire permitted the Turks to raise their heads. In 1422 Murad II besieged 
Constantinople, but was unable to capture it. He failed also in Albania 
against Scanderbeg, but he won the battle of Varna, where Ladislas, the 
young king of Hungary, perished (1444). Fortunately the Hungarians 
and Hunnyad, though defeated again four years later, but yet ever ready 
to fight once more, by heroic eff^orts kept in check those conquerors, who 
could not, moreover, throw themselves with full force on western Europe as 
long as Constantinople held out against them. Accordingly Mahomet II, 
bent on getting rid of that impediment, laid siege to the imperial city 
with two hundred and sixty thousand men, a colossal array of artillery, 
and a fleet which he succeeded in introducing into the harbor by having 
it dragged across the isthmus separating the Golden Horn from the Bos- 
phorus. A final assault made on May 29, 1453, ^^ ^^^^ wiped out that 
remnant of the Roman empire. 

Character of Mediaeval History. — If we now sum up this history 
apparently so complicated, we see that the ten centuries of the Middle Ages 



Middle Ages in Southern and Central Europe 279 

may be divided into three sections. From the fifth to the tenth the Roman 
empire is crumbling, the two invasions, from north and from south, are in 
progress. Arab civiUzation shines for a moment, and then becomes extinct. 
The new^ Germanic empire which Charlemagne wishes to organize is 
dissolved — this is the destruction of the past and the transition to a new 
state of society and of thought. From the tenth to the fourteenth feudalism 
arises. The Crusades are carried on. The Pope and the emperor dispute 
over their respective rights. The burgess class is restored. That is the 
true mediaeval period, simple in its general outlines, and reaching its most 
complete development in the time of St. Louis, with manners, institutions, 
arts and a literature all its own. In the fourteenth and fifteenth this feudal 
society sinks into the abyss of wretchedness. Everything becomes corrupt, 
and death is felt coming on. But death is the condition of life. If the 
Middle Age is in dissolution, it is to make way for modern times. A little 
charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur is soon to restore equality on the battlefield, 
which is the herald of its early coming into society — here under royal 
omnipotence, there under the protection of the public liberties. Force, then, 
is being displaced. It is no longer merely with the man-at-arms or the 
baron, it goes to the kings first, and later on it is to go to the peoples. At 
the same time thought is becoming secularized and is emerging from the 
sanctuary. From amid the ruins the spirit of ancient civilization is about to 
escape. Already artists and writers are on the road to the Renaissance, as 
the Portuguese are on that to the Cape of Good Hope, and bold voices are 
heard reasoning with obedience and even faith. The Middle Age is indeed 
ended, since all these novelties are approaching. But is it wholly dead .? 
To modern times it has bequeathed strong maxims of public and personal 
right that then served only the barons and that now serve everybody. It 
had chivalrous ideas that still mark with a special sign those who have 
retained and practised them. In the last place, its architecture has 
remained the most imposing material manifestation of the religious spirit, 
and we have recourse to it when we wish to build real houses of prayer. 



CHAPTER XVIII 



Medieval Literature, Art and Inventions 



Dawn of New Tendencies — Marco Polo. — The farther removed 
the western peoples became from the poHtical and social organization of 
the Middle Ages, the more modified did their spirit become, and the more 
did their ideal diminish. So far had experience belied those charming 
dreams and those aspirations which gave prominence to the earlier ages 
that the exalted virtue and the enthusiasm of the time of the Crusades 
soon disappeared irrevocably, and men, with very few exceptions, kept 
on incessantly narrowing their horizons and belittling themselves. "From 
the time of Philip the Fair," says Gebhart, "the world did not belong to 
paladines, but to the lawyers and proctors; St. Louis was the last of that 
family of men of prowess whom the peoples of the west had admired 
and loved, after Siegfried, King Arthur and Charlemagne." In religion, 
in ideas, in literature and in art, after the time of this great king, new tenden- 
cies and the forerunning signs of an approaching revolution showed them- 
selves. Discouragement, satire, melancholy, were manifested everywhere; 
the Middle Ages had become exhausted by languor; they, and all intellec- 
tual hfe with them, had been lost in what Rabelais has so happily called 
the slush of Scotus. It was then that Italy came to the aid of the west. 
Owing to the prosperity of its republics, to their industrial and commercial 
wealth, to the persistence on its soil of the ancient monuments of Rome, 
though pillaged and half destroyed, in which one could already suspect 
Hellenic art, to the activity of its political life and to the ardor of municipal 
pride, Italy at an early period, in the fourteenth century, in fact, gave 
the signal for the Renaissance. 

The great traveler, Marco Polo, whose narratives were to wield so 
great an influence on the scholars of the fifteenth century and to lead to 
the discovery of the New World, is an important factor in the declining 
period of the Middle Ages. Born at Venice (1254) of a family engaged 
in the higher Hne of trade, he penetrated into the far east at the very 
time when access to it was easiest for men of the west. Through the 
stages which Itahan commerce had established on the shores of the Black 
280 



Medieval Literature, Art and Inventions 281 

Sea, he reached Armenia, then Persia and the Pamirs, and ascended to- 
wards the northeast, in the direction of the ancient court of the Great 
Khan, Karakorum, which was no longer, as in the time of Rubruquis, 
the Mongol capital, and at last reached the city of Canbaluc, near the site 
occupied by the present city of Pekin. Thence he passed, as agent of 
the Mongolians, into the southern provinces of China, especially Yunnan. 
Through Java, Sumatra, Ceylon, Persia and Constantinople, Marco Polo 
returned to Europe after an absence of twenty-six years (i 269-1 295), 
seventeen of which he had spent at the court of the Great Khan. He 
brought back a considerable quantity of rubies, emeralds, diamonds and 
other precious stones, and also a very distinct impression of those coun- 
tries of the extreme east, whose wealth, once he had returned to Venice, 
he never estimated but by miUions. He so stated it in his conversations, 
and also in the narratives of travel which he dictated in French (1298) 
to Rustichello (Rusticiano) of Pisa (whence the designation Messer Marco 
Millione). These memoirs, soon widely circulated, made Marco Polo 
famous, extended considerably the scope of geographical knowledge from 
the fourteenth century on, and gave to the discoverers of the following 
century an object towards which all their aspirations tended. 

Beginnings of Italian Literature. — At the time when Rustichello 
was writing from dictation the story of Messer Millione's travels, French 
was the language universally used, even by the most eminent men, such as 
Brunetto Latini, for example. Then, however, there begins to appear 
in literature the use of the Italian tongue, which is a Romance dialect 
modified by the influence of Provencal and Latin. Yet for a long time 
before, every province and even city had its own dialect. But these dialects, 
the lingua vulgaris (as distinguished from the lingua grammatica 
or Latin), were used in conversation only, not at all in literature. We 
find traces of it, however, in that Franco-Italian literature of the twelfth 
century which derived its inspiration from the exploit songs imported from 
France, whose heroes it glorifies in a French impregnated with Italicisms 
and constantly becoming more corrupt. But that is not yet an Italian 
literature; this, which is much younger than the other common tongue 
literatures of the Romance countries (than French and Provencal especially, 
which prepared the way for it), came into existence only in the thirteenth 
century. 

Some verses in the Genoese dialect, written about the close of the 
twelfth century, are the oldest authentic specimen of it known. But the 
first century of Italian prose and poetry is the thirteenth. If the prose 
of that time lacks vitality and originality, yet it already furnishes some 



282 Medieval Literature, Art and Inventions 

new things of interest. As for lyric poetry, it begins in the environment 
of Frederick II with servile imitation of the troubadours (Sicilian school). 
From the southern part of the peninsula the movement reached Tuscany 
and the Romagna, and ere long received hfe from a wholly spontaneous 
source of inspiration, religious fervor, which produced in Umbria, in the 
same epoch, important monuments of real poetic culture. Such humble 
and faltering beginnings of ItaHan literature by no means presage its 
admirable development in the fourteenth century, the Trecento, as the 
Italians say. This is preeminently the golden age of Italian literature; 
and it is wholly summed up in the names of the three astonishing and 
dissimilar geniuses, Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. It is the creative 
age, at one and the same time outshining all that precedes and all that 
follows, that in which the Italian language becomes fixed in masterly 
works, in which the Tuscan dialect becomes a national and literary language 
owing to the testi di lingua (models of style) of these three great writers. 

Dante and the "Divina Commedia." — Of these geniuses Dante 
is the most powerful. In the course of his eventful career agitated by 
political passions (1265-1321), this admirable poet, whose legendary 
biography is no longer in existence, and whose authentic life has not yet 
been written, was constantly writing, and in succession cultivated the most 
widely differing styles — lyric and love poetry in his Canzoni, in which 
already he sums up his thought in a bright and striking image, and gives 
to the creations of his imagination the same rehef as to the hving reality; 
abstract philosophical poetry; dogmatic exposition of political, philo- 
sophical and literary questions, especially in the "De Vulgari Eloquio, " 
published before 1305, which is at once a defence of the Italian tongue 
and a treatise on poetry as well; and, in the last place, epic poetry in his 
immortal Commedia. 

In this marvelous trilogy, which is of the fourteenth century, are to 
be found especially Dante's originality and genius. In composing the 
Inferno, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso, the author aimed especially 
to produce a work of edification, to impart a moral or scientific teaching, 
a thing that was a general aim in his age; but to him belongs the merit 
of choosing poetry for his form. He had indirect and even direct pre- 
decessors (St. Brandan and St. Patrick) when he supposed he had himself 
seen the spectacles he wished to describe; but to them he added his personal 
note by introducing politics into his poem, and not the politics of a party, 
but his own passion, which has made the Commedia a personal work 
by no means more Guelph than Ghibelline. Therein Hes a part of the 
poem's originality; from Dante's extraordinary imagination, attentive observ- 



Medieval Literature, Art and Inventions 283 

ing of nature and admirable poetic temperament comes another part. But 
Dante is not an originator of modern thought. What he in fact shows in his 
poem is the whole man of the fourteenth century, with his passions, ideas 
and prejudices. As an artist, on the contrary, he opens a new age, and that 
is what has won for him and his Commedia a place of their own in Italian 
literature. The success of this poem was immense and immediate, at least 
in central Italy. As early as 13 13 the Inferno was known and appreciated, 
and such was the case with regard to the whole Commedia before Dante's 
death (September 14, 1321). But it was only in the sixteenth century that, 
in the spirit of admiration, it was called the Divina Commedia. 

Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Their Successors.— Entirely different from 

Dante is Petrarch (1304-1374). It has been well said of him that he is the 
first modern man, the artist who chiseled Italy's most beautiful love sonnets, 
the most convinced humanist of his time, the great protagonist of the 
revolution in the intellectual world known as the Renaissance. A very 
complex genius, then, is that canon, that protege of cardinals and Popes, at 
Avignon as well as at Rome, an ambassador of the Holy See on more than 
one occasion, and crowned at the Capitol by the Roman senate in 1345. 
Two feelings are anchored deep in that calm, light conscience, namely, love 
of Laura and love of ancient literature, of Cicero and Virgil especially. This 
latter feeling is shown most in Petrarch's Latin poems, his Africa and his 
Eclogues, which he himself regarded as his master works. His Italian 
poems that great man of letters esteemed as mere trifles unworthy of being 
handed down to posterity; yet they are now his best title of gloiy. The 
Canzoniere, containing all the verses with which the poet was inspired by 
that Laura of whom so little is still known, is one of the most remarkable and 
most famous monuments of Italian literature. Petrarch, differing widely 
on this point from the troubadours, there adores the very person of Laura, in 
poems that are at one and the same time veritable outbursts of passion and 
irreproachable models. 

Like Petrarch, with whom he had very deep affinities, Boccaccio (1313- 
1375) was a humanist. It was at Naples, in contact with the lettered court 
of king Robert, where the cultured minds of the time assembled, that his 
vocation as a poet and an enthusiastic admirer of antiquity was awakened. 
From that time Boccaccio never ceased to seek rare manuscripts, which he 
copied or had copied. From Thessalonica he brought Leontius Pilatus to 
teach him Greek; and if at Florence he led the life of a professor (he was 
entrusted there with reading and commenting on the Commedia publicly) and 
of a diplomat, yet it was there Boccaccio wrote in Latin his most serious 
works. But neither his labors nor even his difficulties would have won him 



284 Medieval Literature, Art and Inventions 

immortality. This he owes to the Decameron, a collection of licentious 
stories and a perpetual picture of libertinism, but at the same time a sort 
of human comedy in which, under the appearance of mere amusement, the 
author each day analyzes some passion or dwells on some general idea. The 
style and language of the Decameron are full of merit; and in this respect 
Boccaccio merits great praise, though already before him Italy had prose 
writers of the first order, such as Villani and St. Catharine of Siena. 

The influence exerted by these great writers soon made itself felt. 
Even Dante's epoch had seen the poets without genius who have been called 
the "Epigoni of the first Florentine school," and Petrarch's precursor, 
Albertino Mussato oF Padua (1261-1330). The contemporaries of Petrarch 
and Boccaccio are already more original than the poets of the preceding e- 
poch; they are to remain so during the second half of the fourteenth and the 
early part of the fifteenth centuries. Unfortunately, very few then wrote 
in Italian; following the great masters of the Trecento, nearly all cultured 
minds sought, admired and imitated exclusively the works of ancient 
literature and regarded Latin as the only language worthy to be written. 
In that epoch of full bloom of Italian humanism, one might believe that 
Latin would take precedence over and oppress the common tongue. Such 
was not the case, thanks to a few good, but very rare, authors who brought 
about transition and formed the link between the epoch of Dante, Petrarch 
and Boccaccio and that of Ariosto and Tasso. 

Elements of the Renaissance in Arts. — Just when national language 
and literature were really acquiring life, that is, in the middle of the thir- 
teenth century, the true art Renaissance was beginning in Italy, as the 
sequel of a relatively dim period, but a period in which, however, all culture 
was far from having disappeared from the peninsula. Architecture, paint- 
ing and mosaic work were then, in fact, carried on with ardor, and even 
ancient art, here and there, exerted its influence, especially with the family 
of Roman architects, sculptors and mosaicists called the Cosmati. Yet 
it was only in the thirteenth century that took place the real artistic rebe- 
ginning which bears the name Renaissance. Italy was then well prepared, 
from every point of view, for an opening of this sort. The increase of 
wealth among the intelligent populations of the Italian republics, the 
intensity of municipal pride, the development of literature and beliefs, and 
lastly, the influence of antiquity, are facts whose existence in the peninsula 
at that time every historian points out; and these facts exactly constitute 
the chief elements of the Italian Renaissance. 

In the beginning of this Renaissance Nicholas of Pisa, Giotto and 
Arnolfo del Cambio personify art in its three chief forms. Nicholas in his 



Medieval Literature, Art and Inventions 285 

old age (after 1260) executed great works already visibly inspired by antiq- 
uity, but of a composition often awkward as yet and with rather stiff 
and heavy figures. Giotto (1266-1336), a pupil of the Florentine painter 
Cimabue, who brought the first light to painting, tried to elevate the study 
of nature and ceased to make the edification of the faithful his only object. 
He reacted against Byzantine influence much more strongly than his master. 
His great decorative paintings of Assisi, Padua and Florence show he 
was convinced that, as his pupils were to say after him, the true entrance 
to art is the triumphal gate of the study of nature, and the portraits he 
made of Brunetto Latini and Dante furnish fresh proofs of this. Arnolfo 
del Cambio furnished the type of the Florentine Gothic in building (1293) 
the cathedral of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore, which he was instructed 
to raise "with such high and soveriegn magnificence that it would be 
impossible for human activity and power to build a larger and more beauti- 
ful church." Elsewhere, in the signorial palace of Florence, he produced 
the model of municipal architecture in Italy. 

Florence, then, from the close of the thirteenth century, was preemin- 
ently the centre of artistic life in the peninsula. It so remained in the 
following century, when the disciples of Giotto, who was sculptor and archi- 
tect as well as painter, faithfully, even too faithfully, followed the master's 
example, spread his doctrines throughout the whole of Italy, and decorated 
in accordance with his theories immense wall surfaces at Florence, Pisa, 
Assisi, etc. Whence the uniform character of the Florentine school, from 
which emerged Orcagna, the realist Massaccio, and, in the middle of the 
fifteenth century, the last of the Giottesque painters, that admirable Fra 
Angelico da Fiesole, "the most ignorant and most unaffected of men," an 
exquisite miniaturist equal to the greatest tasks. 

The First Renaissance — Donatello. — While the seraphic Fra Angel- 
ico was executing the frescoes of the convent of St. Mark (before I453)» ^^^ 
first Renaissance was well on its way. It is manifested in the beginning 
of the Trecento by the energetic impulse of Masaccio and Donatello, who 
threw off" the torpor into which the artists, for a moment reawakened by 
Giotto, seemed to have fallen. Masaccio (1402-1428), so remarkable for his 
knowledge of design and mastery of colors, retained whatever was durable 
of the Giotto tradition. After him the schools of Florence (Botticelli and 
Ghirlandajo), Umbria (Perugino), Padua (Mantegna) and Venice (the 
Bellinis) manifested a common love of nature and of life, but, owing to 
different gifts and to occasionally opposite tendencies, leave, before the end 
of the fifteenth century, a magnificent and fruitful work. No less than 
painting was sculpture developed, owing to Donatello. Like all the great 



2 86 Medieval Literature, Art and Inventions 

artists of the Renaissance, whose supple and varied genius is thus explained, 
Donatello came from the fruitful hive of the goldsmiths' workshops of that 
time. When he appeared sculpture had lost all vitality; and to this remark- 
able artist belongs the merit of bringing it back to its two courses of inspira- 
tion, observation of nature and study of antiquity. In all his works, in fact, 
one feels a keen desire for the real presence of the model, the individual 
nature, and the eager search for life in its most expressive features; but 
the uncompromising realism of his first manner was balanced and moderated 
in the second period of his life by a conscientious and profound study 
of the models of antiquity. 

Ghiberti and Brtmellesco. — In connection with Donatello it is proper 
to mention his rival and friend, Lorenzo Ghiberti, who was at one and the 
same time goldsmith, painter, sculptor and architect, and whose studio was, 
in the first half of the fifteenth century, one of the great centres of Floren- 
tine activity. The work of this admirable artist, whose manner is so 
minute and so delicate, is summed up in the two bronze doors of the Florence 
baptistery, to one of which he gave twenty-one, and to the other twenty- 
seven, years' work, but which merited being characterized by Michael 
Angelo (or at least the second) as Gates of Paradise. Like Donatello, and 
at the same time as he, Ghiberti knew and loved antiquity; that goldsmith 
of genius made a specialty of picking out the works of the Greek sculptors 
from amid the ancient rubbish, and he succeeded in forming a marvelous 
collection. Lucca della Robbia and Verrochio, who was the master of 
Leonardo da Vinci and Perugino, also deserve to be named among the 
Florentine sculptors of the Trecento. 

Another great name is that of Brunellesco, who rivals Bramante as the 
greatest architect of modern times. After having been initiated in the 
general laws of Roman architecture, the only style known to the epoch, 
Brunellesco tried to revive them in new monuments, and for the degenerate 
Gothic style he substituted a style as yet unknown, reasoned out and com- 
plete, by giving great consideration to the needs of his age and at the same 
time of tradition. His work is found wholly at Florence and in the neighbor- 
hood, where Brunellesco (from 141 7 on) lavished his attention on the com- 
pletion of the city's great national monument, the Duomo, built churches, 
civic monuments, etc. This great architect's influence, quite considerable 
in the fifteenth century, made itself equally felt in the following century. 
His pure, clear, and yet living productions broke the bonds closely connecting 
architecture with contemporary society, and suppressed the earlier histor- 
ical traditions. Architecture, moreover, was not the only gainer; sculpture, 
painting (to which Brunellesco gave linear perspective), and the decorative 



Medieval Literature, Art and Inventions 287 

arts likewise profited. Accordingly, it has been truly said that he is the 
real ancestor of the second Renaissance, of that produced between 1490 and 
1540, to which St. Peter's in Rome belongs. 

Great Inventions — Gunpowder. — In the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries great inventions were made that contributed powerfully to the 
destruction of the political, social and intellectual system of the Middle Ages, 
and that in reality opened the modern era. Discovered, or, more properly 
speaking, improved in less than two centuries by successful investigators, 
gunpowder, the compass and printing made their influence very deeply felt 
in most widely differing environments and brought on a real revolution in 
the art of war and in the political order, in the art of navigation and in 
the exploration of the globe, and, lastly, in the diffusion of thought and 
in the emancipation of the mind. 

Learned men have given us much discussion, but have not succeeded in 
coming to an agreement, on the date of the discovery and the name of the 
inventor of gunpowder; but at least they have shown for the most part that, 
from very early antiquity, Indians and Chinese had been acquainted with 
the explosive properties of a mixture of saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal. 
Owing to their relations with eastern Asia through the southern seas, the 
Arabs in their turn acquired a knowledge of it, and in like manner, through 
other channels, so had the Byzantine Greeks. These two peoples invented 
the different compositions designated by the name of Greek fire. The use of 
these various compositions, which so terribly frightened the Westerners 
in the time of the Crusades, led in its turn to the discovery of the rocket, 
and, through successive changes, owing to the progress made in refining 
saltpetre, the western nations came to manufacturing mixtures ever more 
and more effective, and at last gunpowder itself. The discovery of this 
explosive substance has successively been attributed to many persons, among 
them Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus. The honor of it has been espec- 
ially accorded to a Franciscan friar of Freiburg in Breisgau, Berchtold 
Schwartz, who is said to have discovered the propelling power of powder 
in 1330, by the intelligent interpretation of an accident. While he was 
one day making a mixture of saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal in a mortar, 
the compound exploded and blew the pestle out of his hand. It really 
seems impossible to connect any precise name with this great invention, 
which appears to have been made almost simultaneously in both the Chris- 
tian and the Mussulman worlds. 

Beginnings of Artillery and Portable Firearms.— In any case, one 
thing is certain, and that is the importance of this discovery. The use of 



288 Medieval Literature, Art and Inventions 

gunpowder led very rapidly to the abandoning of the old war machines and 
the creating of artillery. In the early part of the fourteenth century we find 
the Arabs hurling, with machines and fire, at first rounded stones (at the 
siege of Alicante in 133 1), and then red balls (at the siege of Algeciras 
in 1342). At an early date the Europeans also used both bombards and 
cannons. In 131 1 and 1326 bombards, that is, short, thick metal tubes of 
large calibre, hurling incendiary devices or stone balls, were used at various 
sieges in Italy. Lastly, after the successful experiment made by the English 
in the battle of Crecy (1346), field artillery appeared in addition to the 
siege bombards. But how rudimentary the fire-shooters of that period! 
They had no gun-carriage; for shooting, it was necessary to place them on 
wooden blocks, trucks, platforms, or stands; to move them, they had to be 
hoisted on carriages which several horses could scarcely budge. A little 
later, towards the end of the fourteenth century, light bombards were 
invariably fastened on tvvo-wheeled carriages; as regards the heavy firing 
machines, they were still lodged in pieces of woodwork fastened together 
with iron bolts or bands. Such were the first gun-carriages; we must come 
down to the end of the Hundred Years' War for the field piece, hitherto 
fixed in one position, to begin to be variable in aim. Then also to the 
primitive bombards shooting stone balls were added cannons of lighter 
metal throwing iron projectiles, and, soon' afterwards, the intervention of the 
artillery of the Bureau brothers having won several victories for the French 
field pieces came into current use. At the same time or soon aftenvards 
there appeared, under the name of cannons or hand culverins, or fire 
sticks, the first guns, unshapely, not easily manageable, and even not very 
useful; but they were soon improved and made fit to render very great 
service. Arquebuses and muskets marked the chief stages of this trans- 
formation. 

From that time it was all over with the old method of fighting. For 
the cavalry combats of the Middle Ages waged by men wrapped in iron were 
substituted combats of infantry waged by men lightly clad, but armed with 
engines against which the defensive sheaths of the Middle Ages were no 
longer of any use. In infantry Commines already saw the queen of battles, 
but he thought also that "the sovereign thing in the world for battles 
is archers." Men were not to think so in the following century, for the 
archers had then made way for the arquebusiers, new projectile weapons had 
been substituted for the old. 

Navigation in Ancient Times. — As important as was the invention of 
gunpowder to warriors, to mariners was the knowledge of the properties of 
the magnetized needle and the construction of the compass. To guide them 



Medieval Literature, Art and Inventions 289 

at sea the ancient navigators had only the view of the coast and the watch- 
ing of the sun during the day, and of the other heavenly bodies during the 
night. The different positions of the stars in the sky, especially at their 
rising and setting, informed them as to the course they were following. At 
an early date they had noticed that a star near the pole, the Polar Star, 
constantly marked their direction; and the Phoenicians undertook to use 
it as their guide. They were the first, it seems, to come to this conclusion, 
and this discovery enabled them to make long voyages in the Mediterranean, 
and even beyond the Pillars of Hercules, on the Atlantic ocean. It assured 
to them also the monopoly of maritime commerce for two centuries. But 
what was possible under a clear sky ceased to be so in cloudy weather, when 
no star was in sight. Accordingly the ancient world had to give up the idea 
of making any other voyages than cruises in sight of the coasts. Men had 
advanced no farther in the early centuries of the Middle Ages. The oldest 
of the Icelandic chroniclers, Are Frode (the Scholar), represents his fellow- 
countryman, the Norwegian navigator Floke Vilgerdason, entrusted with 
rediscovering Iceland in 868, as having recourse to indications of a new sort 
and carrying crows with him. He let them loose at dijfferent places in 
midsea; as long as they returned to his ship, he thought he was remote from 
any land; when he saw them go constantly on in a fixed direction he followed 
them, and thus reached the shores of the island discovered for the first 
time by the Northman Nadodd in 86 1. When the western navigators 
acquired the use of the compass, there came a complete change in the situa- 
tion. 

Beginnings of the Mariner's Compass.— Already before the Chris- 
tian era the Chinese were acquainted with the properties of the magnetized 
needle. In the fourth century A. D. they began to turn it to use so as to 
determine the site and direction proper for%a house or a tomb; and soon 
afterwards they used it in the art of navigation. The Chinese junks did 
not then sail only in the seas of the extreme east; they betook themselves 
also to India, and even as far as Persia. That was how the Arab merchants, 
trafficking in the same regions, became acquainted with the Chinese com- 
pass, a very simple device (the magnetized needle was carried by a floater 
on the surface of water in a vessel), and adopted it on their ships. They 
in their turn modified it somewhat, but their most perfect compass never 
differed very much from that of the Chinese. The Arab sailors of the 
Mediterranean did not transmit it to the Europeans, but in the middle of the 
eleventh century they communicated to the Italian and Majorcan sailors 
the property of the magnetized needle and the service to which navigation 
could turn it. From that time on, the sailors of Venice, Amalfi, Genoa and 

19 



290 Medieval Literature, Art and Inventions 

Majorca used it constantly. Their compass was still thoroughly rudimen- 
tary. The magnetized needle, placed inside of a straw or a reed (the Calam- 
itex), as it was called in the Mediterranean, the Marinette, according to the 
expression of ocean mariners), floated freely on the surface of water in a 
vessel, where men went to consult it. Though it began by being used in the 
southern seas of Europe, it is a Scandinavian writer who, it seems, in the 
first half of the twelfth century, makes the first mention of the compass 
as the "guide stone." A little later (1190) Guyot de Provins in his turn 
makes mention of it in his Bible, and speaks of the marinette's infallible 
service. Lastly, in the thirteenth century a number of writers praise the 
merits of the compass, or rather of the rude instrument then in use. 

The Compass Perfected. — This very imperfect instrument, subject to 
the continual agitation of the sea, and rather difficult of observation, seems 
to have spread somewhat rapidly; but it long remained without any notable 
improvement. It was only towards the end of the thirteenth century that 
the modifications which developed the marinette into the compass were 
found. It was then the magnetized needle was placed horizontally in 
equilibrium on the point of a pivot, covered with a dial on which the points 
of the compass were marked, and inclosed in a box suspended by an oscil- 
lating hanger so as to free it from the motion of the ship. Thus was con- 
structed the compass (in Italian boussola, a box) before the date (1302) 
generally assigned to its manufacture by a certain Flavio Gioja, an Amalfi 
pilot of whose life nothing is known. The compass was certainly con- 
structed in the kingdom of Naples, which was still under French princes of 
the house of Anjou, as is indicated by the designation of the north, the 
Tramontane, by a lily, on the dial that was adapted to it. 

In spite of the transformations that made it so valuable to navigators, 
the compass did not immediately come into common use. As late as 
the second quarter of the fifteenth century it seems to have been much 
more widespread among the mariners of southern Europe than among those 
of the ocean. **What matters to you the opinion of the Flemish pilots, 
whose scruples stop you?" the Infante Don Henry de Viseu asked his 
captains in 1433. **F)o the mariners of the North know how to use the 
compass and the marine charts?" Those of the Iberian peninsula, like 
the Italians, knew its use, and they constantly turned it to account on their 
great voyages of discovery. 

The First Paper in Europe. — ^The great invention of the Middle Ages, 
from the intellectual point of view, was that of printing, which assured 
the preservation of the masterpieces of human thought, and enabled them 



Medieval Literature, Art and Inventions 291 

to become popular and diffused everywhere. If this invention, whose con- 
sequences have been so important, was made in the fifteenth century, it 
depended on a multitude of circumstances, and especially on the appearance 
of rag paper, that is, of the material on which the moveable characters were 
impressed. This progress really constituted the indispensable preparation 
for the discovery of pr-inting. 

It took place rather late. It was not rag paper, in fact, that the ancient 
world used for writing upon. The men of old had recourse especially 
to papyrus, that is, paper made from the stems of a reed that then grew in 
Egypt, on the banks of the Nile and in the swamps of the lower Delta. On 
papyrus rolls Egyptians, Greeks and Romans transcribed acts and also 
important works. It was still used in the Merovingian age; but the papyrus 
was already becoming scarce in certain countries, in Gaul, for example, and 
parchment was substituted for it in making copies of ancient works. Every- 
one knows what parchment is. It was invented at Pergamus (whence its 
name) in the second century B. C. — the skin of an animal (a sheep, a goat, a 
calf) was prepared to receive writing. This substance was, from the fourth 
to the sixteenth century, that most commonly used for the transcribing of 
books and acts. From the thirteenth century, however, it was abandoned in 
certain countries of the west in favor of rag paper, otherwise known as paper 
made from linen rags. This paper, in use among the Arabs since the tenth 
century, and introduced into France about a century and a half later, did not 
become widespread, however, in the countries washed by the Atlantic until 
the fourteenth century, when the universal use of body linen permitted an 
abundant and far from costly manufacture of it. Then becoming every 
day cheaper and more common rag paper was soon substituted for parch- 
ment, and, in a certain sense, in the following century, came and stimulated 
the genius of Gutenberg, who was a workman and a trader, as well as an 
inventor. 

The Invention of Printing. — Like the invention of gunpowder and 
that of the compass, the origin of the art of printing is still rather imper- 
fectly known. Who was the first to make use of moveable characters, and to 
imagine the reproduction of the text thus composed by means of a press 
and a special ink ^ This is a point which many investigators have not yet 
succeeded in settling with absolute certainty; but they have at least con- 
fined the question within precise limits, so that only two cities can now 
make pretension to the honor of that great invention, namely, Mayence, the 
home city of Gutenberg, and Haarlem, the city of Coster's residence. If we 
are to believe the Dutch historian, Adrian van Jonghe (who died in 1575), 
Lorenz Coster, of Haarlem, was set by chance on the way to this discovery. 



292 Medieval Literature, Art and Inventions 

He is said to have made moveable wooden characters for amusement, and 
then, after having inked them, to have realized the importance of what he 
had been doing. It was only after this that he gave serious attention to the 
matter, perfected his characters, invented a special ink, and then printed 
in his native city a book said to be the first work published with the aid 
of printing. Its leaves had printing only on one side, .so that it was neces- 
sary to paste the blank pages together in order to conceal this defect. 
Rudimentary as was this press work, yet the public welcomed it, and 
Coster, encouraged, had already substituted lead, and then tin, characters 
for the wooden ones when one of his workmen, Johann Fust, false to his oath, 
stole his most valuable tools and fled with them to Mayence, where he 
began to print on his own account (1442). 

But was not Jonghe's narrative, written in the sixteenth century, an 
afterthought intended to rob Gutenberg of the honor of his invention .? 
Some have so claimed, and it must indeed be acknowledged that the chief 
details of the story are hard to accept. Accordingly men are now generally 
inclined to regard Gutenberg as the real inventor of printing. Johann or 
Hans Genfleisch, called Gutenberg, born at Mayence about the year 1400, 
belonged to a patrician family of that city. Obliged to leave his home in 
consequence of troubles from which the popular party came out victorious, 
he seems to have taken refuge immediately at Strasburg, where he certainly 
resided in 1434 and later. It was there he began his researches in regard 
to the discovery which was to immortalize him; but we know of no book he 
printed at Strasburg. The first work, in fact, whose printing has been 
attributed to Gutenberg was published at Mayence before 1456. This is the 
famous Forty-two Line or Mazarin Bible, so called because the copy of it 
owned by Cardinal Mazarin (now in the Mazarin Library in Paris) was the 
first to attract the attention of bibliographers. By this time Gutenberg 
had returned to Mayence, where he is shown to have been from the latter 
part of 1448, and, in spite of financial difficulties, he continued his investi- 
gations on printing. He carried them on until his death, which occurred 
earlv in 1468, though he had been obliged to surrender all his materials 
to his banker, Johann Fust. 

Development and Diffusion of Printing. — Unfortunately we have no 
precise data on which to base a definite statement of what Gutenberg did. 
His work was somewhat clandestine because he made imitations of manu- 
scripts, which he wished to sell at as high a price as the originals accordingly 
there is no positive informations on this point, and, to determine every 
participant's share in the discovery of printing, we must have recourse to 
considerable conjecture. It would seem as if the work was distributed as 



Medieval Literature, Art and Inventions 293 

follows: The first experiments in printing must have been made in the 
Netherlands. There the invention of moveable characters took place. But, 
whether the tools were inadequate or the processes used for engraving or 
casting characters imperfect, what men have agreed to call the Haarlem 
school has left only works of a rudimentary art. As regards Gutenberg, it is 
proper to claim for him the honor of having discovered the press and, in 
reference to everything else, of having perfected the earlier processes. It 
was he, in fact, who must have found the real practical secret so long sought. 
Consequently we must award to him the glory of being, if not the first, at 
least the real, inventor of printing. 

Moreover, towards the middle of the fifteenth century the invention 
of printing was in the air, as is proved by a fact recently pointed out, namely, 
the existence at Avignon (1444 to 1446) of a goldsmith from Prague, Pro- 
copius Waldfoghel, teaching a Jew of that city the art of writing arti- 
ficially, and selling to him a complete outfit (steel alphabets, forms, vises, 
etc.). Unfortunately, we know of no work printed at Avignon in those 
years. It is important, however, to bear in mind that the oldest books 
printed have no mention of date, locality or printer. It is only from con- 
jecture that a list has been drawn up of the books made in a Netherlands 
workshop or of Coster's presses, or in a Mayence workshop or of Gutenberg's 
presses. It is certain, in any case, that Mayence had a second printing 
house in 1454, and certain also that the first dated impressions were made 
in that city from 1454 to 1457. ^^ Mayence likewise, in 1462, the first 
edition of the Bible with certain date, the Forty-eight Line Bible, was 
published. 

Already before this period printing had begun to spread in Germany. 
If we are to believe certain documents, Strasburg had, as early as 1458, a 
typographical workshop that reached full activity in 1466. Eltvil and 
Bamberg appear in 1460 provided each with its own. About 1463 Cologne 
had that managed by Ulrich Zell, and about 1468 one was established at 
Marienthal. At Augsburg, Niirnberg and Speyer, works printed before 
the year 1475 were likewise printed. These printing establishments were 
for the most part offshoots from the Mayence workshops, driven from that 
city by troubles such as those of the year 1462, or urged by cupidity. Work- 
men trained in Mayence spread also into various neighboring countries. 
Some of them had already gone to several cities of Switzerland and Italy 
before the year 1470, the earliest date at which books produced by press 
appeared at Paris. Three German workmen (Ulrich Gering, Michael 
Freiburger and Martin Krantz), called from Miinster in Switzerland by 
two Sorbonne professors, then began the series of their publications. Print- 
ing was very rapidly developed at Paris, moreover, and soon spread from 



2 94 Medieval Literature, Art and Inventions 

the capital to the other cities of France. England, through William 
Caxton of London, was endowed with the new invention in 1476, as were 
in 1480 the other countries of central and southern Europe, and Scandinavia 
and even Turkey soon began to make use of it. Only Russia remained 
unaffected by the movement until the middle of the sixteenth century; 
but, as everyone knows, that country had not yet become a part of Europe. 
As for the States constituting the sum total of the Europe of that time, 
they were all provided with typographical workshops in the beginning of 
the sixteenth century, and from that time each contributed its share to the 
preparation for the Renaissance. 



CHAPTER XIX 



The First Period of the Modern Era 



Chief Division of Modem History. — ^The predominant charac- 
teristics of the Middle Ages had been the local powers, such as the fiefs 
and the communes, and the belitthng of the idea of a State, while that 
of modern times has been the preponderance of the central power, or the 
absolute authority of kings, by the action of the government substituted 
both for that of the communities and of individuals. But, while the public 
life of the nations was concentrated in their heads, the mind, breaking 
loose from its shackles, by a contrary effort was showing its influence over 
everything so as to bring about a new order everywhere. To the political 
revolution that was to have as a consequence the wars of Italy and the 
long rivalry of the houses of France and Austria were to be added, first, 
a peaceful revolution in art, science and literature, or the Renaissance; 
second, an economical revolution, or the discovery of the New World and 
the way by water to the Indies, that is, the creation of the great trade that 
was to amass commercial wealth in the hands of the plebeians; third, 
a religious revolution, the so called Reformation of Luther and Calvin, 
with the abominable wars arising from the new as well as the old ideas; 
fourth, a philosophical revolution, that of Bacon, Descartes and the eigh- 
teenth century, which was to bring about a new political and social revolu- 
tion, the success of which would, unfortunately, be compromised by blind 
acts of resistance and criminal acts of violence. Such in its general out- 
lines is the history of the three centuries and more making up the period 
known as that of modern times, from 1453 ^° ^7^9- The first part of this 
narrative will, then, be devoted to depicting the political institutions of the 
Middle Ages giving way, in the chief states of Europe, to a new system of 
government. The development from feudalism took place in three dif- 
ferent directions — in France towards an absolute monarchy, in Germany 
towards disintegration, and in England, after the Tudor eclipse, towards 
a constitutional monarchy. 

Louis XI and the League of the Public "Weal. — Charles VII had 

295 



296 The First Period of the Modern Era 

won France back from the English, but the task remained of recovering 
it from the great barons. This work had already been begun, for the 
Praguerie had been worsted, and the leading malcontents put to death or 
banished. Even the Dauphin, he who was so soon to be Louis XI, and 
who took a hand in every plot against his father, had been compelled to go 
and live in his appanage, and then to flee to the duke of Burgundy. He 
was there when Charles VII died (146 1). When the former leader of the 
malcontents ascended the throne, men thought the good old days of feuda- 
lism were about to return. But Louis soon undeceived everybody. He 
did his work awkwardly at first; he deposed most of the officials appointed 
by his father, raised the perpetual capitation tax from one milhon eight 
hundred thousand to three million livres, notified the university of Paris 
that the Pope prohibited it from interfering in the affairs of the king and 
of the city, curtailed the jurisdictions of the parliaments of Paris and Tou- 
louse by creating at their expense (1462) the parliament of Bordeaux; 
offended the ecclestiastical body by revoking his father's Pragmatic Sanc- 
tion of Bourges (which made the bishops almost independent of the Pope) 
in spite of the parliament's remonstrances in favor of its maintenance, 
forbade hunting to the nobility, and claimed all the old feudal rights. He 
obliged the duke of Brittany to recognize appeals from his court to the 
parHament of Paris, to pay the dues of feudal vassalage, and to accept 
the bishops whom the king appointed. He even raised his hand against 
the powerful house of Burgundy, redeemed from it the cities on the Somme, 
as he had had the king of Aragon restore to him Cerdagne and Roussillon, 
as security for two hundred thousand crowns which had been loaned him. 
The answer to this conduct was the League of the Public Weal, formed of five 
hundred princes and barons. The danger was great, and to meet it Louis 
used little heroism, but much cleverness. He first overwhelmed the duke 
of Bourbon in the south, and then hurried northward to meet the count 
of Charolais, heir of Burgundy, who was threatening Paris. If he was not 
victorious in the battle of Montlhery, which was half lost and half won, 
he at least secured possession of Paris, without which he might have be- 
come another Little King of Bourges. Once behind the walls of the capital, 
he strove to destroy the League by offering pensions and domains to those 
greedy barons. By the treaties of Conflans and Saint-Maur (1465) he 
granted them everything they wished — Normandy to his brother, the duke 
of Berry; to the duke of Burgundy Boulogne, Guines, Roye, Montdidier 
Peronne and the Somme towns, which he had recently redeemed from him : 
Ponthieu to the count of Charolais; to the duke of Brittany exemption 
from appeal to the parliament, direct nomination of the bishops, dispen- 
sation from feudal duties, etc. As for the public weal, no one spoke of 
it, or even gave it a thought. 



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Success of Louis's Dangerous Game. — But as soon as the allies had 
left for their homes, he began scheming to take away from them again what 
he had just granted. Normandy especially seemed important for him to 
keep. So as to give the new duke of Burgundy (Charles the Rash, 1467) 
enough to do elsewhere, he stirred up insurrections at Liege, Dinant and 
Ghent, and he kept the duke of Brittany in his own palace with a present 
of one hundred and twenty thousand crowns, while he invaded his province 
and made himself master of it. In order to win the duke of Bourbon he 
gave him an important governorship, and took his brother, Pierre de 
Beaujeu, as son-in-law; he purchased the house of Anjou with money, 
that of Orleans by attaching to himself the aged Dunois, and, lastly, even 
Charles's friend, the count of Saint-Pol, by making him constable of the 
kingdom. Then he got the States General, convened at Tours (1468), 
to declare that the king's brother must remain satisfied with an income 
of twelve thousand livres as his appanage. Charles tried to bring about 
a fresh uprising of the whole feudal body and to drag into the movement 
Edward IV, king of England. But Louis at once attacked the duke of 
Brittany with superior forces, imposed on him the treaty of Ancenis, and, 
as an English army was preparing to land in France, in order to ward off 
this danger he went to Peronne to negotiate with Charles. Just then there 
broke out at Liege a revolt which he had previously stirred up, but had 
forgotten to countermand. Charles, deeply irritated, kept him a prisoner 
in the castle of Peronne until he had agreed to cede Champagne to his 
brother, thus opening to the Burgundians the way to Paris, and made 
him accompany Charles in an attack on Liege. That unfortunate city 
was ruined and pillaged (1468). 

The treaty of Peronne was the last of Louis XI's humiliations, while 
to the duke of Burgundy it was the beginning of wild dreams and under- 
takings impossible to carry out. Louis sent his brother to the other end of 
France, giving him Guyenne instead of Champagne. He compelled the 
duke of Brittany once more to abandon every foreign alliance, and saw 
to it that the promise would be kept. Cardinal La Balue and the bishop 
of Verdun had betrayed him; he showed the danger one incurred in not 
being faithful to him by confining these prelates in iron cages, in which he 
kept them ten years. The king of England, the duke of Burgundy's ally, 
had a mortal enemy in the earl of Warwick. Louis reconciled the latter 
with Margaret of Anjou, and furnished him with the means for overthrow- 
ing Edward IV. Then sure of having once more isolated the Rash, he 
convened an assembly of the notables at Tour (1470), made it tear up the 
treaty of Peronne, and seized Saint Quentin, Roye Montdidier and Amiens. 
He had mustered one hundred thousand men and a formidable artillery 



298 The First Period of the Modern Era 

(1471). Charles's wrath was carried to the highest pitch by the death of the 
duke of Guyenne, on whom the hopes of feudahsm depended (1472). 
Rumors of poisoning went around. The Rash openly accused Louis XI, 
entered the kingdom, and wrought havoc with fire and sword. At Nesle 
the whole population was murdered. But the inhabitants of Beuvais, being 
forewarned, resisted heroically, the women, especially Jeanne Hachette, 
setting the example. This check compelled Charles to retrace his steps. 
Ambition, moreover, was calling him in another direction, and he signed the 
truce of Senlis. 

Mad Career of Charles the Rash. — From 1472 on, the duke of 
Burgundy's whole attention was turned towards Germany, Lorraine and 
Switzerland. He had conceived the design of uniting the two Burgundies 
with his possessions in the Netherlands by acquiring the intervening coun- 
tries, Lorraine and Alsace. That accomplished, he would also conquer 
Provence, then Switzerland, and restore ancient Lotharingia, under the 
name of Belgic Gaul. He already held upper Alsace and the county of 
Ferrette, which Sigismund, an Austrian prince, had pledged to him for 
money; he had acquired Guelderland and Zutphen; and he solicited the 
title of king from the emperor Frederick HL Louis XI, by his activity and 
his money, made these threatening plans fail. The archduke suddenly 
brought to the duke the eighty thousand florins agreed upon for the redemp- 
tion of Alsace. Hagenbach, Charles's agent in that country, was seized 
and beheaded by the inhabitants of Breisach (1474), and, in the last place, 
the Swiss, whom he had molested, entered Franche Comte and defeated 
the Burgundians in the battle of Hericourt. While these events were 
happening in the south, in the north Charles himself failed before Neuss, 
in an effort to support the archbishop of Cologne against the Pope and 
the emperor, and Edward IV, after landing in France at his invitation 
and not finding the promised aid, concluded the treaty of Pecquigny with 
Louis XI, who loaded him with money and sent him back to his island 
(1475). So as to be free to bring his affairs in Lorraine and Switzerland to 
an end, the duke signed a new truce with the king of France, that of Solo- 
thurn. Some days afterwards he entered Nancy, and Lorraine was con- 
quered; but the Swiss remained. He attacked them madly, and was 
completely defeated at Granson (March, 1476), and three months later at 
Morat. Then, Lorraine having risen in favor of Rene de Vaudemont, 
he went to meet his death outside the walls of Nancy (1477). 

The Great French Fiefs Become Crown Lands. — While the greatest 
feudal house of France was falling on the plains of Lorraine, Louis XI 



The First Period of the Modern Era 299 

was ruining the others. All those barons were guilty either of plots against 
the king or of monstrous crimes, John V of Armagnac married his own 
sister and struck down with his dagger anyone who resisted him. An army 
went and besieged him in Lectoure, where he was captured and stabbed to 
death, while his pregnant wife was poisoned (1473). The duke of Nem- 
ours, head of a younger branch of that house, had his head cut off in the 
public market. The duke of Alen^on was cast into prison (1474), and the 
Constable de Saint-Pol was decapitated. Along with their heads, Louis 
also took their property (1475). As for the immense heritage of Charles 
the Rash, he could acquire only a portion of it. His dishonest policy 
compelled Mary, the heiress of Burgundy, to marry the archduke Max- 
imilian of Austria, a fateful marriage from which came the enormous power 
of Charles V, and which became the cause of long and bloody struggles 
between the houses of France and Austria. Yet, in spite of his losing 
the battle of Guinegate (1479), Louis succeeded in incorporating Burgundy 
and Picardy for good in the royal domain; he even compelled the archduke 
to cede Artois and Franche Comte unconditionally (treaty of Arras, 
1482). In the preceding year he had gathered in the whole heritage of 
the house of Anjou. So that when he died (1483) feudalism had lost 
Provence, Maine, Anjou, Roussillon, Cerdagne, Burgundy with Maconnais, 
Charolais with Auxerrois, Franche Comte, Artois, half of Picardy, Bou- 
logne, Armagnac, Etampes, Saint-Pol and Nemours. 

He had conceded irremovability to the magistracy, established a postal 
system, which, however, for a century served only for the affairs of the king 
and those of the Pope; set up the parliaments of Grenoble, Bordeaux and 
Dijon; extended appeals before the king's justice; guaranteed public peace 
and safety on the highways; multiplied fairs and markets; brought from 
Venice, Genoa and Florence workmen who founded the first silk factories at 
Tours, and encouraged the mining industry; and, in the last place, had 
entertained the idea of giving uniform weights and measures to France. He 
liked scholars, founded the universities of Caen and Besan^on, and warmly 
welcomed the new art of printing. Taking him all in all, he was a king. 
Villon and Commines, his counsellor, are the poet and the prose writer of 
his reign. 

France under the Minority of Charles VIII.— His son and successor, 
Charles VHI, was a boy of thirteen, weak in both body and mind. As 
guardian he had his eldest sister, Anne de Beaujeu, a daughter worthy of her 
father in both shrewdness and decision of character. A violent reaction 
against the late king's policy had several victims. But a few hangings or 
decapitations did not keep the barons from trying to overthrow the work 



300 The First Period of the Modern Era 

of Louis XI; they demanded the convening of the States General, and 
obtained it. But they did not realize their expectations. The deputies, 
especially those of the Third, did not wish to serve as agents for feudal hates, 
and, while reforming some abuses, left to Anne de Beaujeu full power along 
with the guardianship of the person of the king, whom they declared to 
have attained his majority. This princess continued her father's policy 
minus its cruelty. The duke of Orleans tried to overthrow her, and to this 
end formed an alliance with the duke of Brittany and the archduke Max- 
imilian. He was defeated and taken prisoner in what is called the Mad 
War (1488). The regent triumphed also in the question of succession in 
Brittany. She made the heiress of that great fief, almost as formidable as 
Burgundy, marry Charles VIII, and thus prepared the way for its being 
united with France (1491). Unfortunately, the king freed himself from 
his sister's guardianship and dreamt of far off expeditions. So as to obtain 
leisure for carrying them out, he signed three deplorable treaties, namely, 
that of Etaples, by which he continued to Henry VII of England the pension 
which Louis XI had paid to Edward IV; that of Barcelona, which restored 
Roussillon and Cerdagne to the king of Aragon; and, in the last place, that 
of Senlis, still more disastrous, for by it Maximilian obtained Artois and 
Franche Comte (1493). By its prince's folly, France receded on three 
of its frontiers; more than two centuries and Richelieu, and after him 
Louis XIV, were needed to recover what Charles VIII had abandoned so as 
to pursue a dangerous chimera. 

England under Henry VI. — ^This country had outstripped the rest of 
Europe in its political institutions. Their Parliament and jury gave to 
the English the voting of taxes and judgment by the citizens, a twofold 
guarantee of political and civil liberty; and the nobility united with the 
commons did not permit the kings to indulge in their caprices. A thirty 
years' civil war destroyed all the guarantees of prosperity and opened the 
way to royal absolutism. This was the War of the Two Roses, originating 
in the rivalry between the house of York (white rose) and that of Lancaster 
(red rose). The latter, placed on the throne by the usurpation of Henry 
IV with the sanction of Parliament, had given to England the glorious Henry 
V, but after him the weak and imbecile Henry VI. Under the latter France 
was lost, and the national pride of the English suffered a great deal from 
these reverses. They were indignant at the truce of 1444, and the king's 
marriage with Margaret of Anjou, who, by reason of being a French princess, 
became the object of their aversion. Richard, duke of York, thought the 
time had come to assert his right to the throne, really stronger than that of 
Lancaster, who was descencled only from the third son of Edward III, while 



The First Period of the Modern Era 301 

the Yorks were descended at one and the same time from the second through 
women and from the fourth through men. He had the favorite minister, the 
duke of Suffolk, impeached by the Commons. The court having secured 
the escape of the accused, he was met in mid-sea by an English vessel, 
seized, tried, and beheaded (1450). At the same time an Irishman, Jack 
Cade, stirred up an insurrection in Kent, gathered around him as many as 
sixty thousand men, and was for some days master of London. The 
pillagings committed by these multitudes armed everybody against them, 
and an amnesty offered by the king induced them to disperse. Their 
leader was captured and executed (1459). He had been regarded as an 
agent of the duke of York. 

The king having had an attack of his malady (insanity), Richard had 
himself appointed Protector (1454), and when the monarch, returning to 
sanity, wished to deprive him of his powers, he took up arms, aided by the 
higher aristocracy, especially that Warwick surnamed the Kingmaker, who 
was rich enough to feed thirty thousand persons a day on his estates. 
Victorious at St. Albans (1455), the first battle of that war, and master of the 
king's person, Richard had the Parliament again confer on him the title of 
Protector and, after a second battle at Northampton (1460), that of lawful 
heir to the throne. Margaret protested in her son's name, and, aided by 
auxiliaries from Scotland, which she purchased by the cession of the fortified 
town of Berwick, she defeated and slew Richard at Wakefield. The rebel's 
head was exposed on the walls of York, in derision adorned with a paper 
crown (1460); and his youngest son, the earl of Rutland, scarcely eighteen 
years old, was murdered in cold blood. From that time massacre of 
prisoners, proscription of the vanquished, and confiscation of their property 
became the rule of both parties. 

England under Edward IV. — Richard of York was avenged by his 
eldest son, who had himself proclaimed king in London under the name of 
Edward IV. The Lancastrians, victorious in the second battle of St. 
Alban's, encountered a bloody defeat the same year (1461) at Towton 
(southwest Yorkshire). Margaret fled to Scotland and thence to France, 
where Louis XI loaned her two thousand soldiers, making her promise in 
return to restore Calais; but the battle of Hexham overthrew her hopes 
(1463). She succeeded in regaining the continent, while Henry VI, a 
prisoner for the third time, was confined in the Tower of I/ondon, where he 
remained seven years. The new king dissatisfied Warwick, who took up 
arms against him, defeated him at Nottingham (1470) and forced him to 
flee to the Netherlands, whose ruler, Charles the Rash, had recently taken as 
his second wife Edward's sister Margaret; and the Parliament, ever docile 



;• 



302 The First Period of the Modern Era 

to the wishes of the stronger disputant, restored Henry VI. This triumph 
of the Lancastrians was brief. Their acts of violence caused bitter dis- 
content, which enabled Edward to appear again at the head of a small army 
which Burgundy had helped him to muster. Warwick succumbed at 
Barnet (1471), and Margaret was no more fortunate at Tewkesbury, the 
same year, which was decisive of the contest. With the Prince of Wales 
murdered and Henry VI dead in the Tower, probably by violence, while 
Margaret was a prisoner and the adherents of the Red Rose slain or pro- 
scribed, Edward IV remained in peaceful possession of the throne. The 
remainder of his reign was marked by the expedition to France already 
mentioned, ended by the treaty of Pecquigny (1475), ^^^ ^7 ^^^ attainder 
of his brother Clarence, whom he had put to death (1478). He succumbed 
to his debaucheries in 1483. 

Richard III and Henry VII. — His brother, Richard of York, duke of 
Gloucester, took advantage of the youth of Edward's sons to deprive them of 
the throne and afterwards have them put to death in the Tower. This 
usurpation angered the Yorkists. Buckingham raised the standard of 
revolt in Wales, but was captured and put to death. Henry Tudor, earl of 
Richmond, the last scion, and that through the legitimatized female line, 
of the house of Lancaster, landed in the west from the Continent and collect- 
ed a small force, with which, however, at Bosworth, he defeated Richard 
III, who perished in the fight (1485). Henry VII united the two Roses 
by marrying the heiress of York, Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, and 
began the dynasty of the Tudors, which reigned one hundred and eigh- 
teen years. He had to suppress only minor plots hatched by impostors like 
Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, and he reigned as master over 
the ruins of the decimated aristocracy — eighty persons belonging to the 
blood royal had perished, and nearly a fifth of the land of the kingdom 
had been added by confiscation to the crown domain. English royalty 
then, at the close of the war of the Two Roses, found itself with more 
resources at its disposal and fewer adversaries to fear. 

Henry VII seldom convened the Parliament, and the money which he 
did not wish to ask of it, lest he might place himself under obligation, he 
procured by forced loans or benevolences, and by confiscations, which he 
multiplied under every pretext. The Star Chamber became a court 
entirely devoted to him and struck down those whom a jury would not have 
permitted to be reached. Two measures completed the destruction of the 
aristocracy, namely, the abolition of the right of maintenance, which 
permitted the nobles to have around them a whole army of servants with 
whom they disturbed the country, and that of the right of substitution, 



The First Period of the Modern Era 303 

which prevented the alienation and division of the nobles' estates. More- 
over, he favored commerce and industry, into which the nation entered 
ardently, by the treaties which he concluded, the voyages of discovery he 
caused to be undertaken, and the development which he gave to shipping. 
He prepared the way for the annexation of Scotland to England by marrying 
his daughter Margaret to King James IV, a union from which the Stuarts 
derived their claim to the crown of England in 1603. Another marriage, 
that of his eldest son, and after that young prince's death his second son 
to Catharine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand the Catholic, had more 
serious consequences, namely, the separation of the Church of England from 
Rome. Henry VH died in 1509. Perfidious, rapacious and cruel, without 
greatness of mind or of acts to redeem his vices, he founded, as did Louis 
XI in France and Ferdinand the Catholic in Spain, that absolute govern- 
ment which in England had a brief splendor only under Elizabeth. 

Why the Moors Remained so Long m Spain. — ^The Spanish people 
had hitherto held almost entirely aloof from European affairs. It had been 
necessary for it to win back its soil inch by inch from the Moors; and this 
work, the first condition of its national existence, was not even completed, as 
the southern extremity of the peninsula still belonged to the Mussulmans. 
This was the kingdom of Granada, the last of the nine States into which 
the khalifate of Cordova had been dismembered. Spain, then, had lived a 
life apart during the whole Middle Ages. It had been absorbed in a single 
task and had had, so to say, but a single thought, that of driving out the 
Moors, who were odious to it both as Mussulmans and as foreigners. This 
isolation and this perpetual Crusade gave it a remarkable originality. No- 
where had religion so much ascendancy over souls; it was half of patriotism, 
and the only bond uniting the various Christian States of the great peninsula. 
But we have seen how, forgetting the Moors, the four Christian States had 
turned their attention and their strength in various directions — Portugal 
towards the ocean, Aragon towards Sicily and Italy, Navarre towards 
France, which dragged it into its action, and Castile kept distracted by 
internal discords. Royalty had everywhere fallen very low. A spirit of 
independence prevailed in the cities, which had their fueros, and among the 
nobles, who were defending their privileges, that is, the right of carrying on 
war and brigandage around them. But the need of uniting to protect 
themselves against these acts of violence had made itself felt, from 1260 on, 
in the cities of Aragon, and, a little later, in those of Castile. The military 
brotherhood of the burgesses known as the Santa Hermanadad was rather 
prosperous towards the end of the fifteenth century, at the time of the siege 
of Granada, and furnished the king with six thousand beasts of burden 
and eight thousand armed men in charge of them. 



304 The First Period of the Modern Era 

Ferdinand and Isabella — Conquest of Granada. — In Aiagon John 
II (1458) poisoned his son Carlos, prince of Viana, who disputed with him 
the kingdom of Navarre (1461), and the Catalans, in revolt, gave themselves 
in succession to the king of Castile, Pedro of Portugal, and the house of 
Anjou. They submitted onlv after eleven years of warfare (1472). In 
Castile Henry IV (1454) made himself at one and the same time odious and 
contemptible by his predilection for Bertrand de la Cueva, a greedy and 
cowardly favorite who dishonored him. The nobles deposed the king in 
effigy on the plain of Avila (1465) and in his place proclaimed his brother, 
Don Alfonso, who died in 1467; then they compelled Henry IV to acknov^l- 
edge as princess of the Asturias his sister Isabella, to the detriment of his own 
daughter (1468). Isabella, from among many pretenders to her hand, 
chose Ferdinand, eldest son of the king of Aragon, and married him secretly 
at Valladolid (1469). It was stipulated in the contract that the government 
of Castile should remain hers in her own right. She took possession of it 
upon her father's death (1474). and she strengthened it in her hands by 
defeating the king of Portugal, who pretended to dispute it with her (1476). 
Three years later Ferdinand, her husband, became king of Aragon. From 
that day Spain existed. Isabella, endowed with a firm will, and Ferdinand, 
a very able man, though perfidious and not to be depended upon, strove 
vigorously to found national unity to the advantage of royalty. First, they 
made the whole peninsula Christian by destroying the last remnant of 
Mussulman domination. Granada had over two hundred thousand 
inhabitants. After the capture of the city (1492) the promise was given 
to the Moors that they would be left in the country with their laws, their 
property and their religion. 

The Spanish Inquisition — Growth of Royal Power. — The popula- 
tion of the peninsula then presented a strange mingling of Mussulmans, Jews 
and Christians. Isabella and Ferdinand resolved, first by persuasion and 
afterwards especially by terror, to bring the dissidents to one and the same 
religious belief. To this end they had already organized the sadly famous 
tribunal of the Inquisition, at first with the sanction of the Pope, but after- 
wards maintained it in spite of his strong protest against the unjustifiable 
use they were making of it. But when we reflect that it had supreme 
jurisdiction in all criminal cases, and how many crimes were then punish- 
able with death in all countries, its victims were, after all, by no means 
so numerous as is generally believed. The Inquisition was established in 
Castile about 1480, and four years later in Aragon. At Seville alone, from 
January to November, 1481, the Inquisitors had condemned two hundred 
and ninety-eight victims accused of secretly practising Judaism, and two 



The First Period of the Modern Era 305 

thousand in the provinces of Cadiz and Seville. In 1492, they brought about 
the expulsion of the Jev^s from the whole country, to the number, it is said, of 
eight hundred thousand, and in 1499 ^^^7 ^^^ ^^^ Moors deprived of the 
religious liberty that had been left to them by the treaty of Granada. Tor- 
quemada alone, the first Grand Inquisitor, condemned eight thousand eight 
hundred persons to the flames, how many of them for religion merely it is 
impossible to say. The avaricious and unscrupulous king was master of the 
terrible tribunal, which he maintained in defiance of the Pope; for he 
appointed its head, and the property of the condemned was confiscated to his 
profit. Accordingly the Inquisition was not merely a means for Spanish 
royalty to master consciences, but an instrument of government — every 
rebel or suspect could be turned over to it. It was a great power; and 
Ferdinand acquired another, with considerable revenues, by making himself 
grand master of the Orders of Calatrava, Alcantara and St. James. He 
reorganized the Santa Hermanadad, declared himself its protector, that is, 
master, and used it to police the countn,' at the expense of the barons, whose 
castles he razed. In a single year forty-six fortresses were demolished in 
Galicia. Commissioners sent into all the provinces heard the complaints 
of the people and made the grandees tremble. 

Ferdinand Regent and King — Progress in Portugal. — Upon the 
death of Isabella (1504), Ferdinand became regent of Castile. As king of 
Aragon he acquired the Two Sicilies (1504), then Navarre (15 15), giving 
him one of the two gates of the Pyrenees, while Roussillon, ceded by Charles 
VIII of France (1493), ^^^ opened the other to him, and, in the last place, 
in 1492 Columbus had given America to the crown of Castile. In 1516 this 
immense heritage fell to his grandson, Charles, already master of Austria, 
the Netherlands and Franche Comte, of which mention v/ill be made later 
on. In the new king's absence Cardinal Ximenes wielded power with an 
energy that made the grandees bow to him. The Communeros, awakening 
too late to the dangers threatening them from the progress of royalty, 
formed a holy league (Junta Santa), which made the mistake of demanding 
the abolition of the pecuniary immunities of the nobility. The aristocracy, 
separating its cause from that of the cities, rallied around the sovereign. 
The League's army was defeated at Villalar, and its leader, Don Juan de 
Padilla, died on the scaflFold (1521). Spanish royalty, then, was triumph- 
ing over the burgesses, as it had triumphed over the nobles, and that nation, 
by serving the ambition of its masters, was going to lose its wealth, its 
strength and its honor. 

In Portugal there was a like revolution. John II (1481) annulled the 
alienations of the royal domain, withdrew from the barons the right of life 
20 



3o6 The First Period of the Modem Era 

and death over their vassals, sent to the scaffold the duke of Braganza 
(1483), and with his own hand slew the duke of Viseu. He transmitted an 
absolute power to his son, Emmanuel the Fortunate (i495)j who let twenty- 
years pass without convening the Cortes. Under the latter prince the 
Portuguese discovered the Cape of Good Hope and the way by sea to the 
East Indies. Thus, throughout the whole of western Europe, royalty 
becarne preponderant, except, as we will see, in Germany. It was noticed 
that great wars were approaching, and, as the countries of central Europe 
remained divided, it was to be they that would become the battlefield of these 
royal ambitions. 

Germany under Frederick ni and Maximilian.— In Germany the 
house of Austria had regained possession of the imperial crown (1438); 
but there had long remained attached to it only the shadow of authority, and 
the emperor Frederick III was not a man to modify this state of affairs — he 
remained satisfied with e isting. His reign of fifty-three years is marked 
only by an unsuccessful war against the king of Hungary, Mathias Corvinus, 
and by the marriage of his son, Maximilian, to Mary of Burgundy, daughter 
of the Rash and heiress of the Netherlands. Maximilian (1493) made some 
efforts, however, to restore public peace in Germany. The diet, which 
retained the legislative power, forbade all war between the States under 
penalty of forfeiture, and, so as to facilitate repression, the empire was 
divided into ten circles, in each of which a director, invested with the mili- 
tary command, was entrusted with seeing to the maintenance of order. The 
imperial chamber passed judgment on infractions. This police organization 
did not succeed because the German princes did not mean to be embarrassed 
in their desires, and because the substitution of Roman for German law was 
universally unpopular. In their domains the princes, like the kings in their 
kingdoms, had assumed absolute power, and the monarchical revolution 
witnessed in France, England and Spain had been brought about also in the 
empire, but not to the advantage of the emperor. In 1502 the seven 
Electors formed the Electoral Union and decreed to meet every year to 
devise means for maintaining .their independence against the imperial 
authority. With another object cities had formed a league that was long 
prosperous, the Hansa, or mercantile association of all the cities on the bank 
of the Rhine and along the German coast that had counting houses in the 
Netherlands, France, England, and even in the heart of Russia. 

As archduke of Austria and sovereign of the Netherlands, by the treaty 
of SenHs (1493) Maximihan acquired Artois and Franche Comte; and then 
he interfered with great inconstancy in the wars of Italy. The most impor- 
tant incident of his reign was the marriage of his son, Philip the Handsome, 



The First Period of the Modern Era 307 

to the feeble-minded Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, 
who brought as dowry to the house of Austria Spain, Naples and the New 
world. Maximilian died (15 19) amid the first agitations of the Reforma- 
tion. 

Political Changes in Milan and Venice. — In the middle of the 
twelfth century Italy was the centre of Mediterranean commerce. It had a 
semi-scientific agriculture, a well developed industry, and much gold, 
luxury and corruption, along wiih the taste for art and literature, but not that 
of arms. More divided than Germany, it had not even a national head, like 
the emperor, nor a body speaking occasionally in its name, like the diet, 
almost every^vhere the republics had been changed into principalities, and 
these princes reigned as tyrants or magnificent despots. The capture of 
Constantinople by the Turks had frightened them for a moment, and the 
different States of Italy had formed a confederation at Lodi(i454). A 
Crusade was spoken of — Pope Pius II wished "the Turks' bell" to be rung 
every morning throughout the whole of Christendom. But, the first 
moment of terror having passed, each returned to its special interests. 

At Milan the condottiere, Francesco Sforza, who had succeeded the 
Viscontis in 1450, left the ducal crown to his son, whom the nobles assassin- 
ated (1476). His grandson, Giovanni Galeas, a boy of eight, fell under the 
guardianship of his uncle, Ludovico il Moro (the moled), him who, so as to 
usurp power, called in the French and began the fateful wars of Italy. The 
Genoese, constantly disturbed by factions, had given themselves to Louis 
XI, who had been wise enough to refuse that Greek gift and had turned 
them over to the duke of Milan. The Lombards, as the inhabitants of that 
rich duchy were called, continued to be the bankers of Europe, and their 
agents were to be found in every part of the commercial world. 

Venice was still the first power of northern Italy. It had come as 
close to royalty as a republic could, for its narrow oligarchy was ruled, 
since 1454, by three State inquisitors, who watched one another and made 
their own statutes. It lived in peace, amid pleasures, under that strong 
government, yet a pitiless government that had as its chief means of action 
espionage and informing. Proveditori supervised the generals whom it was 
careful to choose from among the foreign condottieri, so as to have nothing 
to fear from them at home, and it had just conquered four provinces on the 
mainland, while the Turks were ruining its domination in the Orient. It 
lost Negropont and Scutari, and saw their swift horsemen penetrate into the 
lagoons. So as to save their commerce, the Venetians consented to pay 
tribute to the new masters of Constantinople, and, when they were re- 
proached with this humiliation, they answered: "We are Venetians first, 



3o8 The First Period of the Modern Era 

and Christians afterwards." In Italy the wealth of "the most serene 
republic" stimulated the greed of the neighboring princes, whom its recent 
acquisitions made uneasy. In 1482 they formed a league against it, but it 
triumphed over the Pope's excommunications as well as over the arms of his 
allies. 

Troubles in Florence. — Florence was under the domination of the 
Medici, who had supplanted the Albizzi by placing their dependence on the 
minor arts, or middle class. They were rich bankers, who counted many 
debtors in the city and kept them attached to their fortunes. Cosimo de 
Medici, head of that house, was master in Florence until 1464, but bore no 
title. He made commerce, industry, art and literature flourish, and spent 
thirty-two millions in erecting palaces, hospitals and libraries, while con- 
tinuing to live modestly as a mere citizen. He was surnamed Father of his 
Country. Yet liberty no longer existed. The nobles claimed it through 
the conspiracy of the Pazzi (1478), who assassinated Giuliano de Medici 
at the foot of the altar. His brother, Lorenzo, escaping from the dagger, 
punished the murderers; one of the plotters. Archbishop Salviati, was 
hanged in his pontifical robes from a window of his palace. Lorenzo, the 
most illustrious of the Medici, welcomed the Greeks driven from Constan- 
tinople, had Plato translated, an edition of Homer published, and encour- 
aged artists as well as scholars. Ghiberti cast for him the doors of the 
baptistery of San Giovanni, which Michael Angelo thought worthy of being 
the gates of Paradise. In 1490, ruined by his acts of magnificence, he was 
about to suspend payment; but the republic made itself bankrupt for him. 
Under Piero II, his unworthy successor, a new popular party, that of the 
Frateschi, claimed public liberties. Its leader, Girolamo Savonarola a 
Dominican friar, wished to restore purity of morals to the clergy, to the 
people their ancient institutions, and to literature and art the religious spirit 
which they had already lost; and, seeing the wealthy, and especially the 
young nobility, opposed to all reform, he saw and declared that all those 
gilded vices were about to be severely chastised by a foreign hand. 

Rome and Naples. — It was not the Papacy that could ward oflF these 
misfortunes, for the Holy See was occ pied by Popes who dishonored the 
tiara. Sixtus IV, for example, was engaged in acquiring for his nephew, 
Girolamo Riario, a principality in the Romagna, and, so as the better to 
succeed, took a hand in the Pazzi conspiracy- Alexander VI (Rodrigo 
Borgia, 1492) has remained as the greatest blot upon the Church. His 
earlier life had been stained by debauchery, his election to the Papacy by 
simony, as was his political rule while Pope by perfidy and cruelty. He 



The First Period of the Modern Era 309 

freed the Holy See from a large number of turbulent, petty barons who 
infested the neighborhood of Rome, but, in order to overthrow them, had 
recourse to trickery, treason and assassination. His son, Cesare Borgia, 
has remained famous as the type of the unscrupulous ambitious man who 
uses every means to attain his end. So as to create a State for himself in 
the Romagna, he waged against the barons of that country the same sort of 
warfare as his father had waged against those of the Papal States near 
Rome. No crime was repugnant to him, whether it was to be perpetrated 
by the dagger or by poison, and more than anyone did he contribute to 
winning the name Poisoner for Italy. 

In Naples Ferdinand (Ferrante), successor since 1458 to Alfonso the 
Magnanimous, triumphed at Troia over John of Calabria, his Angevin 
competitor; but he seemed to take it upon himself as a task to bring about 
another revolution by reviving hatreds instead of extinguishing them. The 
severity of his government having roused his barons against him, he deceived 
them with promises, invited them to a feast of reconciliation, and at his 
own table had them seized and then murdered. Less important persons 
were treated no better. Ferrante assumed to himself the monopoly of all 
the trade of the kingdom and crushed the people with taxes. None the less 
did he permit the Turks to seize Otranto, and the Venetians Gallipoli and 
Policastro. The deep discontent which he aroused explains how Charles 
VIII so easily conquered the kingdom of Naples, without breaking a lance; 
and the same was the case with all the Italian dominations, from one end of 
the peninsula to the other. 

Strength of the Turks — Mahomet II. — ^The enemy of Italy most to 
be feared at that time seemed to be the Turk. By the conquest of Constan- 
tinople that people had made a permanent settlement in the great peninsula 
separating the Adriatic from the Black Sea; Mahomet II was already obeyed 
from Belgrade on the Danube to the Taurus in Asia Minor. But that vast 
empire had two enemies, in the west the body of Christian nations, and in 
the east the Persians, Mohammedan schismatics; and should these two 
enemies act in concert to combat the Turks, they would keep them within 
bounds, the one on the Tigris, the other in the lower Danube valley. Like 
that of all Asiatic peoples, the Turkish government was despotism tempered 
by insurrection and assassination. But over the sultan or padishah was the 
Koran, whose interpreters, the mufti and the ulemas, occasionally won a 
hearing from the prince or the people. The Turkish army was then more 
efficient than those of the Christians. Its chief strength consisted in forty 
thousand Janissaries, a regular and permanent troop instituted by Murad I, 
while the Christians still had only feudal militia. The sultan could also 



3IO The First Period of the Modern Era 

rapidly raise one hundred thousand men in the Timariots, a sort of estates 
given for Hfe on condition of mihtary service. The discipline of these 
soldiers was severe; they v^ere skilled in fortifying places, and possessed an 
artillery superior to all others. To these powerful means of action kept at 
work for a century by four or five energetic and able princes let us add the 
religious fanaticism and warlike ardor of a people to which victory had given 
in a few years so many lands and so much wealth, and we may understand the 
triumphing fortune of the Ottomans. 

When Mahomet II had made Constantinople his capital, he wished to 
encroach on Hungary and Austria. Driven back in 1456 from the walls of 
Belgrade by John Hunnyad, he threw himself on the remnants of the Greek 
empire and seized Athens, Lesbos, the Morea and Trebizond (1461). At 
that time Christendom should have united for a common effort, and Pope 
Pius II asked it to do so. We have seen how the princes then had other 
cares. Those most menaced, Mathias Corvinus, king of Hungary, and 
Frederick III, emperor of Germany, were warring against each other; but 
at least Corvinus stopped the Turks on the Danube. A single man, the 
Albanian Scanderbeg, prince of Epirus, struggled unrelaxingly; in twenty- 
three years he won twenty-two battles over the Ottomans. His death 
(1468) and the fall of Croia, his capital, gave them Albania. Two years 
later they took Negropont from the Venetians and triumphed over a diver- 
sion made, at the' instigation of Pope Paul II, by the Tartar Uzun Hasan, 
who had just founded the White Sheep dynasty in Persia. Fortunately 
the Moldavians, on the lower Danube, the Albanians and some Greek 
mountaineers compelled Mahomet II to scatter his forces. Though he 
had sworn he would make his horse eat oats from the altar of St. Peter's 
in Rome, yet he was unable to make any serious effort against Italy. The 
surprise of Otranto by his fleet (1480) was only a bold diversion. Yet when 
his horsemen came to burn villages within sight of Venice, that republic 
became frightened; it sued for peace, ceded Scutari on the Adriatic coast, 
and promised an annual tribute. Mahomet II was still pondering on great 
plans when death cut him off at the age of fifty-three (148 1). 

Bajazet II and Selim the Ferocious. — His son, Bajazet II, more a 
man of letters than a soldier, was, moreover, compelled to be prudent by the 
revolt of his brother (Djem or Zizim), who, being defeated, took refuge with 
the Knights of Rhodes. They turned him over to Pope Alexander VI, and 
in the hands of the Christians Djem remained a threat to his brother. 
Accordingly, in spite of his pacific tastes, Bajazet, in order to keep the 
Janissaries busy and loyal, sent them to conquer Bosnia, Croatia and Mol- 
davia, on the left bank of the Danube, where Wallachia was already tribu- 



The First Period of the Modern Era 311 

tary to the Turks (1489). But the soldiers, dissatisfied with that indolent 
prince, deposed him; his fourth son, SeHm, poisoned him, had his three 
brothers and all their children put to death (1512), and the movement of 
conquest resumed its course. First he attacked Persia, and began that 
religious war with the massacre of forty thousand Shiite sectaries found in 
his States. A bloody battle near Tauris was indecisive, but a renewed 
expedition of a few years later won for him the districts of Diarbekir, Orfa 
and Mossul, which extended the Turkish empire to the Tigris (1518). 
West of that boundary, Syria belonged to the Mamelukes of Egypt. Selim 
attacked them, defeated them at Aleppo, Gaza, and lastly on the banks of 
the Nile, where the Copts and the fellahs oppressed by the Mamelukes 
received him as a liberator. The khalif of Cairo, Motawakkel, turned over 
to him the standard of the Prophet and abdicated religious authority into 
his hands 15 17). The Arab tribes in their turn submitted, and the shereef 
of Mecca came and offered the keys of the Caaba to the conqueror. The 
sultan became the commander of the faithful, that is, spiritual as well as 
temporal head. A serious consequence of this conquest was the closing of 
the way to the east through Egypt to Europeans and the inflicting of a 
mortal blow on Venice. Master of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, 
in the western basin Selim also occupied the strong position of Algiers, 
which the pirate Horuk, surnamed Barbarossa, had taken from the Span- 
iards and placed under his protection in exchange for the title of bey (15 18). 
From that time until 1830 Algiers remained a centre of operations for 
pirates dangerous to European comme-rce. Abominable cruelties had 
marked -these conquests, and have won for the conqueror the surname 
Ferocious. He died in 1520, and had as successor Soliman the Magnificent, 
a worthy rival of his famous contemporaries, Francis I and Charles V. 

First Modem European Wars. — A general phenomenon had been 
produced in the second half of the fifteenth century — in all States society had 
assumed a form of government that had been lost with the Roman empire, 
the absolute power of kings. This is the political side of the great revolution 
that was in progress, and that was to change art, science, literature and, 
for one half of Europe, religious belief, at the same time as it was changing 
institutions. The inevitable consequence of this first transformation, which 
put the peoples, along with their wealth and strength, at the disposal of 
the kings, was to be to give the latter the temptation to enlarge their do- 
mains. European wars, then, were going to succeed the feudal wars, as 
kings had succeeded the barons. France, the first ready, was the first also 
to want to pass beyond its frontiers. 

"The Genoese are giving themselves to me," the prudent Louis XI had 



312 The First Period of the Modern Era 

said, "and I give them to the Devil." He had taken good care not to 
enforce the rights which the house of Anjou had bequeathed to him over the 
kingdom of Naples. Unfortunately for France and for Europe, but most 
of all for Italy, his son, Charles VIII, took them up, and, so as not to be 
embarrassed in carrying out plans that must surely, he thought, lead him 
from Naples to Constantinople and from Constantinople to Jerusalem, he 
abandoned Cerdagne and Roussillon to Ferdinand the Catholic, and to 
Maximilian Franche Comte, Charolais and Artois. He crossed the Alps 
at Mont Genevre, w2ls w^ell received at Turin and in the duchy of Milan, 
where Ludovico II Moro then needed his aid against the Neapolitans, 
made Piero de Medici deliver up to him Sarzana and Pietra Santa, the two 
fortresses of the Apennines, and without an obstacle reached Florence, 
which he entered as a conqueror. But when he demanded a war contribu- 
tion, the inhabitants threatened him with a fight, and he left, but, never- 
theless, occupied Pisa and Siena. 

Charles VIII Wins and Loses Naples. — At Rome the cardinals and 
the barons, maltreated by Alexander VI, opened the gates to the French. 
The Pope had taken refuge in the Castle St. Angelo. Charles turned his 
artillery on the old fortress and demanded from him his son, Cesare Borgia, 
as a hostage, and then Djem, the brother of the sultan Bajazet, who was to 
serve his ulterior plans in the Orient. Some days later the former escaped, 
and the latter, perhaps poisoned before given up, soon died. At San 
Gerinano the king of Naples, Ferdinand II, wished to fight; but he was 
abandoned by his soldiers, and Charles entered his capital without striking 
a blow (1495). There he had himself crowned king of Naples, emperor of 
the east, and king of Jerusalem. But he dissatisfied the barons of the 
Aragonese party by depriving them of their fiefs and offices, and those of the 
Angevin party by giving these spoils to the French. While he was forgetting 
himself amid festivities, behind him a league was being formed of which 
Venice was the moving spirit, and which comprised Ludovico il Moro, 
Alexander VI, Maximilian, Ferdinand the Catholic, and Henry VII of 
England. Forty thousand men were awaiting him at the foot of the Apen- 
nines. Warned by Commines, he retraced his steps in hot haste towards 
the north, leaving eleven thousand men in the south. The battle of Fornovo 
(1495) opened the way across the Alps to him, but Italy was lost, and nothing 
remained of that brilliant expedition. Italy, freed from the foreigner, 
returned to its intestine quarrels. Ludovico called in Maximilian, who 
failed ridiculously before Leghorn (Livorno). Civil war continued in the 
Romagna, between the Pope and the barons; in Tuscany, between Pisa 
and Florence; and at Florence itself, between the followers and the enemies 




PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 
TlKJodoro Itoosevelt. tweuty-sixth President of the United States of America. 




Sri WILFRID LAURIER, PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA. 

'Born November 20, 1841, in the Province of Quebec, be devoted himself to 
thP Hw and qnicldy became prominent in politirs. He veas made Minister of 
Inland Revenue in 1877 and Prime Minister in 1896. 



The First Period of the Modern Era 313 

of Savonarola. The latter perished at the stake (1498); but his death 
did not restore harmony. 

Conquest of Milan and Naples by Louis XII. — Louis XII, the grand- 
son of a brother of Charles VI, succeeded his cousin (1498), whose widow he 
married so as to keep her from transferring Brittany to another house. Heir 
to the rights of Charles VIII over Naples, he also derived from his grand- 
mother, Valentina Visconti, pretentions over the Milanese, usurped by the 
Sforzas. To Venice he promised Cremona and Ghiara on the Adda; to 
Cesare Borgia, the French duchy of Valentinois; to Florence the submission 
of Pisa then in rebellion, and he sent Trivulzio, an Italian who had passed 
over to his service, to conquer the Milanese. Ludovico, repelled by every- 
body, fled to the Tyrol (1499). The bad administration of Trivulzio, a 
former Guelph, who persecuted his adversaries, reopened the Milanese to 
Ludovico; but he was defeated near Novara (1500), delivered up by his 
Swiss mercenaries, and confined in the castle of Loches in France. Now 
master of the Milanese, Louis XII formed an alliance with the Florentines, 
whom he supported against rebel Pisa, and with Alexander VI, whose son, 
Cesare Borgia, he helped to carve out a principality for himself in the 
Romagna. In the last place, so as to get possession of the kingdom of 
Naples without striking a blow, he divided it in advance with Ferdinand the 
Catholic (1500). He reserved to himself the title of king, with the capital, 
the Abruzzi, and Terra di Lavoro. Ferdinand asked only Apuglia and 
Calabria. The unfortunate king of Naples, Frederick (Federigo), be- 
trayed by the Spaniard Gonsalvo de Cordova, threw himself into the arms 
of the king of France, who offered him a refuge on the banks of the Loire 
(1501). But, the conquest having been completed, differences arose 
between the Spaniards and the French. Perfidious negotiations gave 
Gonsalvo de Cordova time to gather troops. D'Aubigny was defeated at 
Seminara, the duke of Nemours, viceroy of Naples, at Cerignola, La Tre- 
mouille on the Garigliano, and the French once more evacuated the kingdom 
(1504). So as to retain at least the Milanese, Louis XII signed the disas- 
trous treaty of Blois (1504). In return for investiture with the Milanese, 
which the emperor conferred on him, he abandoned his rights over Naples 
which he transmitted to the sovereign of the Netherlands, the heir of Austria 
and of Spain, the prince who would soon be Charles V, who would marry 
the king's daughter, Madame Claude, with Burgundy and Brittany as 
dowry. As public opinion protested against this marriage, Louis convened 
the States General, which declared the two provinces inalienable, and 
besought the king to give his daughter to his heir presumptive, Francis, duke 
of Angouleme. 



314 The First Period of the Modern Era 

League of Cambrai, Holy League, and Failure of France. — Julius 
II had succeeded Alexander VI. This warHke Pope proposed to drive from 
Italy the barbarians, as he called the French and the Germans, to weaken 
Venice, and to make the Holy See the great power in the peninsula. First, 
he succeeded in uniting the whole western world against Venice — Louis 
XII, who M^ished to win back from the republic the places that had been lost 
by the duchy of Milan; Ferdinand the Catholic, who claimed from it a few 
maritime cities of the kingdom of Naples; and lastly the emperor Maxi- 
milian, who was anxious to secure a foothold in Friuli. All these cupidities 
formed a coalition at Cambrai in 1508. At Agnadello Louis XII won over 
the Venetians, a victory that enabled the allies at least partly to satisfy their 
greed. When this was done, the Pope, with far from apostolic readiness, 
turned the treaty of Cambrai against Louis. He formed a holy league to 
expel the French from Italy, and, setting example at the same time as he 
gave counsel, he personally laid siege to cities and entered through the 
breach with arms in his hands. Then Louis XII turned Pope, with as good 
grace as Julius II had turned general, but by no means with the same 
success, for the council he convened at Pisa to depose the Pontiff was a 
ludicrous failure. Julius II called another together at St. John Lateran's, 
which excommunicated the king and drew into the alliance all the Catholic 
powers, even the Swiss, on whom Louis lavished money. France triumphed 
at first, owing to the talents of the young Gaston de Foix, who drove the 
Swiss back into their mountains, took Brescia from the Venetians, and de- 
feated the allies at Ravenna (1512); but he was killed in that battle, and 
under his successor. La Pelisse, the French retreated to the Alps. Maxi- 
milian Sforza, son of Ludovico il Moro, returned to Milan, and then France 
was invaded on all sides. Ferdinand the Catholic threatened Spanish 
Navarre; the English and the Germans made the French cavalry turn tail 
on the Day of the Spurs; and, in the last place, the Swiss penetrated as 
far as Dijon, whence they retreated only on being paid in gold. The sole 
ally whom France had, James IV, king of Scotland, shared his ill fortune; 
he was defeated and slain at Flodden by the English. Louis stopped his 
enemies with a truce, disavowed the council of Pisa, and sent Henry VIII 
back to his island with a pension of a hundred thousand crowns for ten 
years (1514). Thus, after fifteen years of war, much bloodshed and waste of 
money, France was no farther advanced than at the close of the reign of 
Charles VIII. Louis died on January I, 1515. His administration had 
been better than his policy. He created two parliaments, one in Provence 
and another in Normandy, suppressed criminal procedure in Latin, put 
down pillagings by the military, and made commerce and agriculture pros- 
per. For these reasons he was called Father of the People. 



CHAPTER XX 



Revolutions in Trade, Culture and Religion 



Age and Economic Causes of Exploration. — During this first 
period of modern rimes the historian finds other things than European 
wars and the revival of absolutism in government to record. Let us 
glance at them while there is a brief lull in general hostilities, vehich are 
to be renewed with increased bitterness, stimulated by the rival ambitions 
of two young monarchs contending for the mastery of Christendom. Be- 
sides these and the inventors already mentioned who, in the declining 
period of the Middle Ages, had provided the human mind with new and 
powerful instruments of activity, study, and even of destruction, the his- 
torian has to give his attention to the bold navigators who, in the same, 
and especially in the opening, period of modern times, to the known world 
added worlds hitherto unknown, developed geographical knowledge 
and made the most important discoveries it had ever been given to man 
to accompHsh. The Age of Discovery is the name that may most appro- 
priately be given to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; for the expansion 
of geographical knowledge was, as much as the Renaissance, one of the 
characteristic features of the age, and even that whose effects on general 
civilization have been the most considerable, still, in fact, make them- 
selves the most intensely felt. 

Until the beginning of the fifteenth century the peoples who were to 
be the protagonists of the era of discoveries, namely, the Portuguese and 
the Spaniards, had scarcely ventured out upon the Atlantic, even south- 
ward along the African coast, much less towards the fabled West. The 
Mediterranean basin had, in fact, remained to the Middle Ages what it 
was in antiquity, the chief, if not the only, field for the exploration of 
land. Accordingly searches and discoveries, at least those of them of 
which we have a record, began to be numerous only when economic neces- 
sities imposed them, in a certain sense, on the western peoples. The 
trafliic in spices along the commercial routes followed since ancient times 
had been made more and more difficult by the progress of Turkish con- 
quest; the necessity of reaching the Indies by a new way free from the 

315 



3x6 Revolutions in Trade, Culture and Religion 

Orient's political vicissitudes, a way by which precious commodities would 
reach the west not only safely, but at the same time at less cost, a mari- 
time route, in a word, was the starting point of those discoveries, to which 
the human mind's need of expansion in a period of rebirth and development 
gave a most marvelous impulse. The Portuguese were the first to turn 
in the direction of maritime explorations. It was by first going south 
that they sought to reach the kingdom of Prester John (the States of the 
Abyssinian Negus) and the Indies, by circumnavigating the African coasts. 
They went about this task in a methodical and studied manner, in con- 
formity with a plan whose outlines had been traced in advance. To 
the chance discoveries of the earlier ages there succeeded from that time 
investigations discussed beforehand, maturely prepared and systematically 
carried out, which complemented one another and which their being 
marked on the maps has for ever saved from obhvion. 

The Colonial Empire of the Portuguese. — ^We have already seen 
how, under the patronage of Prince Henry de Viseu (the Navigator), 
fourth son of John I the Great, the Portuguese had become familiar with 
the ocean's tempests and had come to confide in the compass. But Nor- 
mans from France had been the first to enter upon the path of maritime 
discovery along the west coast of Africa. The Portuguese, more favor- 
ably situated, followed them there and went farther. In 1472 they crossed 
the Equator. In i486 Bartolomeu Diaz descried the Cape of Storms, 
which King John II called the Cape of Good Hope, the year after Diogo 
Cam had discovered the Congo. Ere long, in fact (1497), Vasco da Gama 
turned the African continent and reached Calicut, on the Malabar coast 
of Hindustan. Later on the poet Camoens made this heroic expedition 
the subject of his "Lusiad." Alvarez Cabral founded the first European 
establishment in the Indies, that of Calicut; and on his way he had been 
cast by a storm on the coast of Brazil (1500). 

The real founder of the Portuguese colonies was Albuquerque. By 
seizing Socotora and Ormuz he closed the old routes of Indian commerce 
against the Mussulmans and Venice; to Portuguese India he gave its 
capital by taking possession of Goa (15 10); he conquered Malacca, se- 
cured the alliance of the kings of Siam and Pegu, as well as possession 
of the Moluccas islands, and was preparing an expedition against Egypt 
and another against Arabia, where he wished to destroy Mecca and Medina, 
when he fell into disgrace (15 15). Conquest continued under Joao de 
Castro, who seized Cambaya. Japan was discovered in 1542, and a 
counting house was estabUshed on the island of Sancian, opposite Canton 
in China. The chief points occupied by the Portuguese were, after Goa, 
the centre of their domination, Mozambique, Sofala and Melinda on the 



Revolutions in Trade, Culture and Religion 317 

African coast, from which they took gold dust and ivory, Muscat and 
Ormuz in the Persian Gulf, whither provisions came from central Asia, 
Diu on the Malabar coast, Negapatam on that of Coromandel, Malacca 
in the peninsula of that name, which gave them the commerce of the coun- 
tries of Indo-China, the Moluccas, where they occupied Ternat and Timor, 
and from which they exported spices. Their counting houses on the west 
coast of Africa, on the Congo, etc., became important only after the estab- 
lishment of the negro slave trade, and for a long time Brazil received as 
its only colonists criminals and transported Jews. 

First Spanish Explorations in the Atlantic. — A mere chance, 
it may be said, made the Spaniards a colonizing people. Just as its territor- 
ial unification was being completed, owing to the able policy of Ferdinand 
of Aragon, Spain was led to take part in the great maritime movement 
by Christopher Columbus having discovered a new world for it. This 
discovery was not the result or reward of efforts long and patiently con- 
tinued by a whole people, but was due to the genius of a single man, to 
whom Isabella of Castile had merely the merit of furnishing the means 
of execution which he had sought in vain elsewhere. Efforts have been 
made to rob Columbus of the honor of having discovered America; it 
has been asked if men in ancient times had not already known of the New 
World, and if the illustrious Genoese navigator had not had predecessors 
in the Middle Ages. It is probable that Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans 
were carried by winds or currents to the shores of the western continent, 
but, if so, they did not return. It is certain, however, that Northmen, 
towards the end of the tenth century of our era, from Iceland discovered 
and colonized Greenland, and thence reached the shores of Labrador, 
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New England (Vinland). But there 
is no proof that knowledge of this discovery spread beyond Scandinavia. 
As regards the pretended precursors of Columbus, such as Alonzo Sanchez 
of Huelva and Jean Cousin of Dieppe the more we investigate the his- 
tory of the period the less probable become the traditions of which they 
are the heroes. 

Does this mean that no one before Columbus suspected the existence 
of lands situated in the Atlantic west of Europe, and that no one in the 
Middle Ages tried to discover them ? By no means. The Arab expedi- 
tion of the Maghrurins tends to prove that Mussulmans tried to pry into 
the secrets of the Dark Sea. In the fourteenth century the Genoese reached 
the Canaries and the Azores, and on more than one occasion other wester- 
ners, so as to escape hostile ships or pirates, advanced very far upon the 
open sea; but with what dread! "There is no one who would dare its 



3i8 Revolutions in Trade, Culture and Religion 

breadth," says an Arab writer speaking of the Atlantic; "men keep to its 
coasts." And in 143 1 the Venetian, Piero Quirini, who had turned aside 
from his route towards the west to escape the Genoese, then at war with his 
country, speaks of the approaches of the Canaries as terror-inspiring and 
unknown places. It was again the Portuguese v/ho, along with the Genoese, 
advanced farthest towards the west. One of their pilots, for example 
navigated four hundred and fifty leagues across from Cape St. Vincent, and 
found a piece of wood adorned with carvings that could have come only 
from a not very distant continent. This fact and many others of the same 
kind, such as the finding at the Azores of "two broad-faced corpses not 
resembling Christians," taken in connection w4th the opinions of Aristotle 
and Strabo regarding the proximity of the eastern shores of Asia to the 
western extremity of the European continent, as well as with prophetic 
verses of Seneca, made men in the fifteenth century believe in the existence 
of important islands in the Atlantic Ocean. These were, besides the 
archipelagoes already known, the legendary land of St. Brendan, and 
especially that Antilia which Martin Behaim, the famous pilot cartographer 
of Niirnberg, in 1492 represented for the last time on one of his globes. 

The Inspiration of Columbus. — These islands, in the opinion of the 
learned men of the time, who thought the Atlantic Ocean much less wide 
than it is in reality, must be the stages of the route towards those eastern 
shores of Asia of which Marco Polo had told such marvelous stories. As for 
a new continent intervening in the middle of the seas between the two extrem- 
ities of the old, no one dreamt of it, no one found room for it on the terres- 
trial globe, which was supposed to be much smaller than it is in fact. Owing 
to this error in calculation, and to the slowness with which the Portuguese 
discoveries were being made along the African coast, but especially to 
the persevering spirit of Christopher Columbus, the discovery of the New 
World was possible. We are very imperfectly acquainted with the history 
of his career prior to 1487. He was born at, or at least in the territory of, 
Genoa, of humble parentage, as early as 1435 according to some, but not 
until 145 1 according to M. Henry Vignaux, one of the latest investigators of 
the problem. After a very brief sojourn at the university of Pavia, he 
took service on a ship, visited in succession the European coasts of the 
Atlantic, Iceland, and perhaps even Greenland, in any case the coast of 
Guinea and the African islands, and "navigated as far as anyone had navi- 
gated before him." On returning from Iceland he settled in Portugal, 
married a sea-captain's daughter there, and lived by making picture books, 
terrestrial globes, and geographical and nautical charts. 

While in the far North, Columbus may have heard the Scandinavians 



Revolutions in Trade, Culture and Religion 319 

refer to the unknown countries of the west, and, if he was in Greenland, he 
may himself have verified their existence; but it seems : s if his personal 
ideas did not take shape before his entering into correspondence W'ith the 
Florentine astronomer, Paolo Toscanelli. Then only did he substitute a 
precise plan for vague theories, and like Toscanelli, Columbus came to 
think it possible to reach the Indies by going westward. Backed by argu- 
ments from Toscanelli, he laid his project before Alfonso V, king of Portugal, 
and when, a little later, Joao II secretly undertook to have the theory of the 
two Italians verified on his own account, Columbus did not let himself be 
discouraged by the failure of those who had tried to steal his idea from him. 
He left the peninsula at the close of 1484, went and first, it would seem, 
appealed to Genoa, then to Venice, and, unsuccessful with both republics, 
made his way to Spain (1485). His object w-as to make his plans known to 
Ferdinand and Isabella, the sovereigns of Aragon and Castile. Owing to the 
influence of the monks of Palos and the archbishop of Toledo, he w^as at last 
admitted to their presence and explained his ideas to them (1486). He 
made an impression; but his theories on the sphericity of the earth were 
condemned by the queen's confessor; and he had to uphold them again at 
Salamanca, in discussions that won for him warm and powerful friends 
among the Dominicans and at the court. Attached from that time to the 
service of the king of Aragon, he had to await the close of the war against the 
Moors before Ferdinand would pay attention to his project. At last, on 
April 17, 1492, he signed at Santa Fe a real treaty with the sovereigns, a 
treaty by which he became high admiral, viceroy and governor in the lands 
he might discover, and could then, about eighteen years after he had first 
entertained his idea, concern himself with making it a reality. 

First Voyage of Columbus. — Leaving Palos with three caravels, the 
Santa Maria, the Nina and the Pinta, on August 2, 1492, Columbus steered 
first towards the Canaries, where he made a short stay, and then west and 
southwest, carefully concealing from his companions the true length of the 
distance traversed each day, by close attention to his compasses discovering 
the magnetic variation, and energetically combating the discouragement of 
his sailors. At last, at two o'clock in the morning of October 12, 1492, he 
reached land, the island of the Bahamas to which he gave the name San 
Salvador, called by the natives Guanahani, probably either Watling's or Cat 
Island. Then continuing the course of his discoveries, he touched at several 
other islands of the same group, searching for the gold which, with his mind 
filled with Marco Polo's stories, he expected to find immediately. After- 
wards he coasted along Cuba and Haiti, which he called Juana and Espan- 
ola. Not satisfied with taking possession of these lands, on the coast of the 



320 Revolutions in Trade, Culture and Religion 

latter be built a fort. On January i6, 1493, ^fter having skirted Haiti 
as far as Cape Samana, he turned his back on the lands he had discovered, 
and for the first time crossed the Atlantic from west to east. On March 15, 
seven and a half months after he had set out, he entered the harbor of Palos. 
The welcome accorded to Columbus was really enthusiastic. The 
stories of his companions and the sight of the Indians whom he had brought 
back with him aroused a universal acclaim. At Barcelona, V\^hither he went 
at once to see the sovereigns, the great Genoese told to Ferdinand and 
Isabella the story of his marvelous voyage. He presented to them speci- 
mens of gold found in the new lands, and the whole assembly, falling on 
their knees, intoned a Te Deum. Then Columbus was ennobled by letters 
patent, and the king bestowed on him an escutcheon with this legend: "To 
Castile and Leon Columbus gives a new world" (A Castillay a Leon, 
Nuevo Mondo dia Colon). It is important not to let ourselves be led into 
error by the expression, "a new world." When Columbus reached the 
Lucayas, it by no means occurred to him that a continent might lie between 
the western shores of Europe and eastern Asia, and he thought he had 
reached those islands of Japan (Cipango) which Marco Polo had mentioned. 
Consistent with himself, he thought of Cuba as lying along the shore of the 
Asiatic continent and as being not far from Hang-cheu-fu. At first all 
his companions and contemporaries erred with him, and the great navigator 
seems to have persisted in this belief until his death. All thought the 
Indies had been reached for the first time by the western route. In this 
way is it explained how America was first called the West Indies, and how 
the aborigines were and still are designated as Indians. But, from the 
point of view of the glory won by Columbus, what matters this erroneous 
idea ? It was indeed the Genoese navigator who was the real discoverer of 
the New World, because it was he who, on the morning of October 12, 
1492, introduced it to the community of civilized mankind. 

Other Discoveries by Columbus and His Followers. — A certain 
number of scholars, however, soon caught a glimpse of the truth. But it was 
not to satisfy them that Columbus was, on September 23, 1493, sent out with 
seventeen vessels towards the new lands; it was to satisfy the avaricious 
passions awakened in the minds of all. Columbus alone, perhaps, remained 
animated with exalted and disinterested feelings. Some of the Lesser 
Antilles, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and the southwest coast of Cuba were dis- 
covered during this second voyage (ended in June, 1496), during which the 
Spaniards and the Indians had more than one clash of arms. The 
Europeans, moreover, in spite of the admiral, were already beginning to 
maltreat the natives, and it was without the knowledge of Columbus, who 



Revolutions in Trade, Culture and Religion 321 

had set out towards the west for the third time, going along the coast of 
South America past the Orinoco delta, and discovering Trinidad, Tabago 
and Granada, that a convoy of Indian slaves left for Spain (May, 1498), 
Columbus, who had met a cold reception at the court (1496), was then 
deposed and put in irons in Santo Domingo, by order of a special com- 
missioner, Bobadilla. He did not remain long in this condition; but, in 
spite of the favor shown him by Isabella on his return to Spain (1500), he 
never recovered his former influence. When, in 1504 he came back from 
a fourth voyage, undertaken to reach by the westward course the Moluccas 
and India, which Gama had just found by doubling the Cape of Good Hope, 
a voyage in the course of which the knowledge of the Antilles was com- 
pleted and the coast of Central America from Honduras to the Gulf of 
Darien explored (1502-1504), Columbus found himself without a protector 
in consequence of Isabella's death, and he soon afterwards (1506) died in 
isolation, weariness and sorrow. 

His companions, Hojeda, Amerigo Vespucci, Vincenzo Pinzon, Juan de 
la Cosa, etc., continued his work. Even during his lifetime they explored the 
whole northern coast of the South American continent, by unraveling, as 
Las Casas expresses it, the clew given them by their former leader. A little 
later Ponce de Leon, setting out in search of a nev/ Fountain of Youth, dis- 
covered Florida and began exploration of the Gulf of Mexico (15 12), while 
Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the lofty mountains of the isthmus of 
Panama and, near the end of September, 15 13, at the gulf of San Miguel, 
took possession of the Great Ocean, on whose shore he obtained valuable 
information regarding Peru. But he could not conquer that empire, any 
more than could Juan de Grijalva that of Mexico, concerning which, in the 
course of his exploration in the gulf of that name, (1518), he gathered much 
valuable information. During the three following years (1519-1521) 
Hernando Cortes added the Aztec empire to the Spanish dominions. In 
1520 Magellan (Magalhaen) discovered the strait since bearing his name, 
separating South America from Terra del Fuego, He crossed the Pacific 
Ocean to the Philippines, where he met his death, and his companions 
returned to Spain by way of the Moluccas and the Cape of Good Hope, 
being the first men to circumnavigate the globe. Other adventurers, 
Almagro and Pizarro, also gave Peru and Chile to the crown of Spain, 
while still others founded, on the opposite coast, Buenos Ayres at the mouth 
of the La Plata. 

Results of These Explorations. — ^The Portuguese colonies declined 
rapidly. They were but a line of commercial agencies along the coasts of 
Africa and Hindustan, devoid of the power of resistance because few Portu- 

21 



322 Revolutions in Trade, Culture and Religion 

guese settled there. The Spanish colonies, whose original object was not so 
much trade as the working of mines, on the contrary attracted to the new 
world many Spaniards, and in America formed a compact domination 
divided into two governments, that of Mexico and that of Lima. Even now 
Mexico and South America belong to the Spanish race, with the exception of 
Brazil, which is Portuguese. 

These discoveries turned over to the industrial activity of the men 
of the west a new world and that Orient in which so much wealth had 
remained idle. They changed the course and form of general transactions. 
For trade by land, which had hitherto held the first rank, maritime trade was 
now to be substituted, and the result would be that the cities of the interior 
would decline, while those on the coasts would grow. Besides, commercial 
importance passed from the countries washed by the Mediterranean to 
those situated on the Atlantic, from the Italians to the Spaniards and the 
Portuguese, and, later on, from these to the Dutch and the English. Not 
only did these peoples become wealthy, but they became Vv^ealthy in a certain 
way. The mines of Mexico and Peru brought into European circulation an 
enormous mass of specie. Industry, commerce and agriculture had the 
capital which they needed in order to prosper, and they developed. "The 
third part of the kingdom of France," says a writer of the sixteenth century, 
"was cleared in a few years, and, for one large dealer there had been in Paris, 
Lyons or Rouen, there were now fifty who found it less difficult to go to 
Rome, Naples or London than formerly to Lyons or Geneva." All this 
work created a new power, the personal property that comes into the hands 
of traders, and that, in the following centuries, was to compete with the 
realty wealth remaining in the hands of the barons. 

By the postal routes which Louis XI had organized, and by the lock 
canals which Venice had begun to construct in 1481, communication was 
becoming easier and more rapid. When, to the letters of credit imagined in 
the Middle Ages by the Jews in order to guard their means from their perse- 
cutors, were added the banks of deposit and of credit instituted by the 
Hansa, the Lombards and the Tuscans, it came to pass that capital circu- 
lated as easily as provisions. We have already seen a banker, Cosimo de 
Medice, passing as a prince. Lastly, assurances, used first at Barcelona and 
Florence, and later on at Bruges, began the great system of guarantees which 
now gives so much courage and security to trade. Thus did work make its 
way in the new society; and through it, through order, economy and intel- 
lect, the descendants of the slaves of antiquity and of he serfs of the Middle 
Ages, having become the leaders of the industrial world and the masters 
of money, were one day to be the equals of the earth's former masters. 

The Revival of Letters. — ^We have seen ho-^^ the nrst orinted book, a 



Revolutions in Trade, Culture and Religion 323 

Bible, appeared in 1454, and how rapidly the new art spread throughout the 
whole of Christian Europe. In consequence the price of books decreased 
enormously. In 1500 Aldus Manutius (Teobaldo Manuzio), of Venice, put 
on sale a whole collection of ancient authors at fifty cents a volume. A 
single bookseller in Paris, Josse Bade, published as many as four hundred 
works, most of them folios, and in 1529 twenty thousand copies of Erasmus's 
"Colloquia" were printed, so anxious were the people for anything to read. 
Italy had taken up the new invention eagerly. Before 1470 there were 
printers already in Rome, Venice and Milan. Everywhere schools, libraries 
and universities were founded; the writings of the ancients were published 
in the original and in translations, not only those of the Fathers of the Church 
to uphold the faith, but also of orators, historians and philosophers that 
were to expose it to great perils by opening to the mind new fields in which 
reason would seek and find its domain, and oftener gather chaff and weeds 
than nourishing grain. Pope Julius II was not always surrounded by 
captains and diplomats; quite as many scholars and artists were to be found 
with him. "Literature," he said, "is silver to the plebeians, gold to the 
nobles, diamonds to princes." When the Laocoon was found in the Thermae 
of Titus, he had the bells of all the churches in Rome rung. Leo X pur- 
chased for five hundred sequins five manuscript books of Titus Livy, and 
he was the friend as well as the protector of Raphael and Michael Angelo. 

In that period only three countries thought and produced. Italy stood 
first with Ariosto, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and all its artists of genius; 
France was second with Marot, Rabelais, Calvin, Amyot, Montaigne, and a 
number of scholars and lawyers whose renown still stands high, such as 
Cujas, Pithou, Godefroy and Dumoulin; and Germany is third with 
Reuchlin, Ulrich von Hut en, the shoemaker poet Hans Sachs, and the 
Ciceronians, at whose head it is customary to put Luther in Latin literature. 
The Netherlands had Erasmus, of bold but rather flippant mind and timid 
heart, whose Latin works had immense success. England was healing its 
wounds from the war of the Two Roses, but it soon had its Sir Thomas 
More, and Spain had its attention directed much less on antiquity than 
towards America and its mines, Italy and the Netherlands, where the armed 
bands of Charles V were so eager for war and pillage. 

Revival of the Arts and Sciences. — Italy was the cradle of the reviv- 
ing arts, and this was natural, for it was there that were to be found the 
most beautiful remnants of the art of antiquity. In the beginning of the 
fifteenth century Brunellesco substituted the arcade for the ogive, and 
for the complicated lines of the florid Gothic the straight line of the Greek 
temples or the elegant curve of the Roman dome. For Julius II Bramante 



324 Revolutions in Trade, Culture and Religion 

constructed St. Peter's of Rome, which Michael Angelo crowned with the 
immense dome the idea of which he derived from Agrippa's Pantheon. The 
sculptors of Florence and Rome could not surpass their rivals of antiquity; 
but Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raphael and Titian far surpassed 
the most illustrious renowns and created what has remained, along with 
music, the modern art preeminently, namely, painting. In the arts Italy v/as 
in the sixteenth century the great teacher of the nations. France followed 
it closely with its architects who erected so many castles and palaces, such 
as the Louvre, the Tuileries of Philibert Dolerme, Fontainebleau, Blois 
and Chambord, where elegance and grace were united with strength, and 
with its sculptors, two of whom, Jean Goujon and Germain Pilon, have 
remained illustrious. Germany had only two painters, Albrect Diirer and 
Holbein. Engraving, recently invented, was multiplying the masterpieces 
of the artists, as printing was popularizing those of letters, and Palestrina 
was beginning his great work in higher music. 

Science was still hesitating between the dreams of the Middle Ages 
and the rationalism now guiding it. Men did not yet know that the physical 
world is subject to unchanging laws; they continued to believe in capric- 
ious powers, magic influences, and witchcraft, for which victims continued 
to be put to death even after its folly had been exposed by many able v/riters, 
the first of whom was a Jesuit priest early in the seventeenth century. 
AtWiirzburg one hundred and fifty-eight supposed sorcerers were sent 
to the stake in two years (1527-8). Italy, however, had some geometri- 
cians, and a priest of Prussian Poland, Copernicus, in 1507 discovered the 
truth concerning our planetary system. Thus, while navigators were giving 
new worlds to human activity and, through artists, scholars and men of 
letters, modern genius was deriving inspiration and strength from ancient 
genius, science was assigning their real respective places to the sun, the 
earth and the planets. Why should we be astonished that the age which 
saw these great results surrendered to the formidable power of thought ? 

The Demand for Religious Reform. — It is not our purpose, as it is 
not within our province, to discuss the dogmatic changes of the sixteenth 
century; but of a change in the temporal government of the Church, into 
which gross abuses had crept everywhere, everyone must admit there was 
ample need. Zealous Churchmen in high station were among the most 
ardent advocates of reform. Already in the Middle Ages the desire for 
Christian perfection had already raised up religious reformers. Relaxation 
of morals and the abuses with which very many of the clergy were justly 
reproached had often served as a pretext for rejecting the Church's doctrinal 
teachings; but, on the whole, the nations of Europe had remained subject to 



Revolutions in Trade, Culture and Religion 325 

the beliefs and discipline of the Catholic Church. With the Great Schism 
resistance here and there became more obstinate, and critics bolder. Theo- 
logians most devoted to the cause of Christian unity showed the greatest 
zeal in denouncing the abuses of the Papal court and of the prelates, espec- 
ially of those who were temporal princes, and in lamenting the weakening of 
moral discipline in the clergy. "Is it not an abomination," Gerson ex- 
claimed in his "Treatise on Simony," "for a single prelate to hold some- 
times two hundred, and sometimes as many as three hundred, benefices ? 
Is it also good for religion that canons and bishops, laying their copes aside, 
put on the habiliments of war to go and fight in the same ranks with lay- 
men ?" And Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, whom Bossuet describes as the 
greatest man of his time, while he was presiding as legate over the Council of 
Basel strove in his letters to bring Pope Eugenius IV to introduce reforms. 
"Men's minds are in expectation of what may come to pass, and something 
tragical may soon be produced. The blame for all the disorders will be cast 
on the court of Rome, which will be regarded as the cause of all the evils." 
The result of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century was, in 
fact, the withdrawal of a large number of the faithful from the authority of 
the Popes; whole countries, in which the new political conditions of absolu- 
tism aided the discontent against the religious rulers, broke the ancient 
Christian unity and severed themselves from the Church, naturally repudiat- 
ing some of its dogmas along with its government. 

Protests against the Policy of the Popes. — From the early years of 

the fifteenth century attacks against the Papacy had multiplied with great 
violence. The policy of the Avignon Popes as abettors of France and 
opponents of Germany and England and of their successors as Italian princes 
was one cause of this, and the introduction of the unpopular Roman law into 
Germany by Maximilian I was another. In Italy itself the scandalous 
nepotism of the Popes, and especially of Alexander VI, had provoked the 
protests of Savonarola. Julius II, in spite of the austere cleanliness which 
he restored in the court of Rome, none the less incurred the criticisms of 
princes and peoples. This Pope, in fact, who ardently sought the liberation 
of Italy and who was the second founder of the Papal States, realized his 
plans only sacrificing the soldiers and exhausting the gold of all the peoples 
of Europe. The more peaceful, but more luxurious, pontificate of Leo X 
brought no comfort to the Catholic nations. The whole of Christendom, by 
its tributes and its gifts, fed the artistic luxury of the Renaissance, profit- 
ing only the city of Rome. No species of embellishment was wanting to 
the capital of the Popes, no intellectual enjoyment was refused to the Pontiff 
who was a refined appreciator of art and literature, to the generous and 



326 Revolutions in Trade, Culture and Religion 

tolerant Maecenas who heaped honors on Raphael and who offered to the 
skeptic Erasmus a refuge more secure than that clever if shallow satirist 
could find anywhere else. By the aid which he gave to the writers imitating 
antiquity Leo X contributed to popularizing the spirit of the Renaissance, 
thoroughly impregnated though it was with pagan philosophy. His pre- 
decessors in the practice of tolerance, the Popes of the fifteenth century, had 
not had to assume praise to themselves for such proteges as Poggio and 
Lorenzo Valla. The latter, when demonstrating the untruth of the pre- 
tended donation of Constantine, on which an unenlightened piety based the 
right of the Holy See to temporal sovereignty, censured the warlike Popes in 
the following terms: "When shall I see a Pope who will really be the vicar of 
Christ, of whom no one may say that he has reduced Perugia or Bologna by 
arms, and who, instead of stirring up wars, will pacify the peoples by the 
mere ascendancy of his apostolic character!" With impunity Poggio 
frequently attacked the monks in his satires. And the peoples bordering 
on Rome had become, as Machiavelli testifies, "the less religious the nearer 
they were." The great favor bestowed by the Holy See on the Renaissance 
did not aid merely in diffusing writings and ideas hostile to Christianity, 
but, beyond the mountains, scandalized men with an artistic taste less 
refined than that of the Italians. And thus did Leo X, the Pope who was 
preeminently a patron of the arts, give his name to the age of the Renais- 
sance, only to lose the spiritual government of half of Europe. 

The Church in Germany — Monks and Humanists. — Germany was 
the first nation to rebel against the Church, because it had most to suffer 
from the abuses of the court of Rome and of the clergy. The Pope derived 
from the German principalities a revenue far higher than that which the 
emperor obtained. Nearly a third of the soil of Germany belonged to the 
German clergy, which owned extensive estates and great dignities. The 
three archbishops of the Rhineland were Electors and chancellors of the 
empire; and the bishop of Wiirzburg was decked with the title of duke of 
Franconia. The conduct of these prelates was in conformity rather with 
their condition as great feudal barons than with their ecclesiastical character. 
In the time of the Reformation the Elector of Mayence, Albert of Hohen- 
zollern, desiring to make his episcopal city a German Rome, from all sides 
accepted money that would enable him to encourage the fine arts. Several 
times did he sell his vote in the election in which Francis I was a competitor 
of Charles of Austria for the imperial dignity. The Elector of Treves, 
Richard von Speyer, was regarded as one of the most valiant warriors of his 
time; and the Elector of Cologne, Hermann von Wied, was reputed to have 
said mass only three times during his whole ecclesiastical career and as not 



Revolutions in Trade, Culture and Religion 327 

understanding a word of Latin. Of the higher clergy throughout the whole 
of Christendom, those of Germany stood most in need of being reformed. 
Their failings were so much the more shocking as the influence of the 
Renaissance was developing the critical spirit in their country. The 
German humanists were also casting ridicule on the monks, their purely 
traditional knowledge, and even on scholastic philosophy. Men's minds 
were highly excited by the disputes of the learned Hellenist and Hebraist, 
Reuchlin, who lived and died a faithful Catholic, with Hoogstraten, the 
high inquisitor of Cologne, concerning the sacred books of the Hebrews, 
which the Inquisition ordered to be destroyed (1509). In the last place, the 
turn of mind peculiar to the Germans was revealed in the age of the Renais- 
sance. Erudition attracted them more than literature. In less than half 
a century the number of the universities had doubled; and the ancient 
models did not serve, as in Italy, to inspire new masterpieces by imitation, 
but to open schools and produce commentators. In that universal fervor 
for the ancient texts, the Sacred Scriptures themselves were subjected to 
the free criticism of the erudite, especially in the university of Erfurt, where 
Luther, the initiator of the Reformation, studied. 

Luther's Early Life. — Born at Eis!eben in Thuringia (1483), Martin 
Luther was the son of a poor peasant. As his natural intelligence gave his 
parents reason to hope that he could rise above their humble condition, 
he was sent to the schools of the small city of Eisenach. He reached there 
only by begging along the way, "singing at the doors in order to obtain 
God's bread. " Four years afterwards spent at the university of Erfurt made 
him proficient as a philosopher and a lawyer. His fine voice and the merry 
verses he easily wrote made him a welcome guest at all festivities; but 
oue day at the close of a banquet he astonished his friends by telling them 
he had resolved to shut himself up in a cloister. The sight of a fatal duel 
in which one of his friends was killed, or a violent storm that had assailed 
him at the gates of Erfurt, led Luther, it is said, to adopt a form of relig- 
ious life that seemed incompatible with his fiery temper. In the convent 
of the Hermits of St. Augustine which he entered he attracted attention 
by his love of discussion and by austerities that affected his health without 
abating the alarm he felt regarding his salvation. His superior, the noble 
and generous Staupitz, in order to satisfy that feverish monk's need of 
activity, in 1508 called him to the chair of philosophy in the university 
of Wittenberg, which the Elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise, had recent- 
ly* founded in his capital. But from the cloister Luther had brought with 
him a restless mysticism, a secret contempt for the practices of the Church, 
and a formalist and intolerant faith. A journey which he made to Rome 



328 Revolutions in Trade, Culture and Religion 

to defend the interests of his university brought him into contact with 
priests and prelates who were ardent admirers of pagan Hterature and 
treated the Scriptures with jaunty levity. At Wittenberg Luther, on the 
contrary, boasted of famiharizing his students with the text of the sacred 
Book in its integrity and purity. 

Quarrel about Indulgences— Luther Secedes.— An opportunity soon 
arose to mark the divergences between his teaching and the theology of 
Rome. Luther embraced it with the ardor which he applied to everj^ 
dispute. In 15 17 Pope Leo X ordered the preaching of an indulgence, 01 
promise of remission of the temporal penalties due on account of sins already 
forgiven in confession to a priest, to all Christians who would contribute out 
of their means to the rebuilding of the basilica of St. Peter's in Rome. In 
addition to the fact that an announcement of a Papal collection had, several 
years before, been unfavorably received in Germany, the carrying out of the 
indulgence of 15 17 was accompanied by abuses that were to render it 
especially odious, and some of the bishops of southern Germany excluded it 
from their dioceses. Over the distribution and collection of the proceeds of 
the indulgences in northern Germany the Pope had appointed as general 
agent one of the three ecclesiastical Electors, Albert of Hohenzollern, arch- 
bishop of Mayence, allowing him a share of the money received. The 
businesslike prince-prelate counted on the pious generosity of the faithful 
enabling him to pay considerable debts he owed to the wealthiest banking 
house in Germany, that of the Fuggers of Augsburg, who employed Domin- 
ican friars as preacher and collectors. They took care to have an employee 
of the bank accompanying each preacher wherever he went. The chief 
preacher was Johann Tetzel, who had made himself so disliked on a former 
similar occasion that the emperor Maximilian threatened to drown him. 
Nevertheless, he now met with very profitable success almost everywhere 
until the Elector of Saxony excluded him from his dominions and Luther 
affixed on the door of the chief church of Wittenberg ninety-five proposi- 
tions against indulgences as Tetzel was preaching them (October 31, 15 17). 
According to the teaching of the best Catholic theologians, only a few of 
these propositions were really heretical. But they betrayed Luther's disbe- 
lief in good works used as a means of meriting the rewards of the life to come. 
For a long time past he had been inclined to exaggerate man's perversity 
and the powerlessness of his reason and will. "Our justice is only sin," 
he IS reported to have already said in a sermon. For saving souls he counted 
only on justification by faith. "Be a sinner," he wrote to a friend, "sin 
boldly, but believe more boldly still, and rejoice in Christ who has triumphed 
over sm." Such was the "great indulgence" which Luther presented in 



Revolutions in Trade, Culture and Religion 329 

opposition to that of the Pope, the good news, the Gospel whose evangelist 
he assumed to be, according to the ambitious title he was ere long to bestow 
upon himself. After a heated discussion with Tetzel, who drew up one 
hundred and ten counter-propositions in defence of indulgences, and an 
interview at Augsburg with an envoy from Rome, Cardinal Cajetano, who 
wished to make him retract without discussion, Luther openly severed his 
connection with the Church. At Wittenberg, in the presence of the assem- 
bled students, he burned the Pope's bull excommunicating him (1520). 
Thereafter he had no other name for the Pope but Antichrist, and, in the 
language of him and his followers, Rome became the Babylon of the Book 
of Revelations. The subsequent history of the movement he had thus 
started belongs to the general record of European affairs, to which we must 
now return. 



CHAPTER XXI 



First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 



Francis I and Charles V. — Meanwhile other events had been happen- 
ing that, added to those just recorded, were to bequeath to Europe a legacy 
of strife, slaughter, and desolation. Two ambitious young men had won 
positions which, owing to conditions created by their predecessors, they 
were led to abuse. Francis of Angouleme had succeeded his cousin on 
the throne of France, and Charles I of Spain had, after unprecedented 
bribing of the Electors by rival candidates, become Charles V of Ger- 
many. Louis XIFs successor, young, ardent and warlike, had begun 
his reign with an invasion of the Milanese. Crossing the Alps by the 
Argentiere pass, at Marignano he met thirty thousand Swiss, whom he 
defeated in a "battle of giants" (1515)- The Swiss, disgusted with the 
Italian wars, returned to their mountains, where they signed the Per- 
petual Peace that assured their alliance with France until the French 
Revolution. So as to arrest the progress of the young conqueror. Pope 
Leo X hastened to sign with him a treaty modifying the Gallican semi- 
schism of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges in favor of both Pope and 
king. The concordat of 15 16, suppressing local episcopal elections, 
empowered the latter to make direct nominations to episcopal sees and 
other ecclesiastical benefices, and gave to the former the annates or revenues 
for one year of all vacant sees. In this division the Pope left the spiritual 
to the prince and took the temporal; consequently the French bishops be- 
came the servants of the crown, and the road was paved for fresh troubles 
to both Church and State. 

By a succession of fortune-building marriages, a new power had 
arisen to rival and menace France. We have seen how Charles of Austria 
became king of Spain; but, besides his grandfather's realm and his own 
ancestral domains in south Germany, he also ruled over the Netherlands, 
Franche Comte, Naples, and Sicily. Francis I, still elated over his great 
victory in Italy, entertained no dread of the master of so many separated 
States, and, instead of destroying that immense power before it could 
be consoHdated, concluded with Charles the treaty of Noyon (15 16), 
330 



First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 331 

which enabled the young prince to gather in all his crowns in peace. This 
friendship was broken three years later, on account of rivalry for the im- 
perial dignity when MaximiHan's death left it vacant. Charles and Francis 
were the chief contestants. The Electors, regarding both these competi- 
tors as too powerful, named Frederick the Wise of Saxony; but he refused, 
and advised the princes to choose Charles of Austria, who was more interes- 
ted than anyone else in defending Germany against the Turks, constantly 
growing more menacing. Therefore Charles became emperor, and his 
power, served by superior ability, might threaten the independence of 
the other States if ambition prompted. Francis, a typical specimen of 
Gallic vanity, left nothing undone to provoke him or to work off his spite 
for his disappointment beyond the Rhine, the blasting of his hope to be- 
come another Charlemagne. The day was to come when his desire for 
vengeance would lead him to call the Turk, the arch-enemy of Chris- 
tendom, to help him crush the power of him whom the Electors had chosen. 

First Franco-Austrian War. — ^The forces of the two adversaries 
were less unequal than they seemed. France formed a compact whole, 
already to a certain extent homogeneous, upon which it was difficult to 
encroach; and its resources were in the hands of a royalty that found no 
resistance confronting it. By the concordat of 151 6 Francis had brought 
the clergy under his own control; the feudal aristocracy was already in 
that position, and he boasted that he had rid kings of pages. Charles, 
on the contrary, met resistance everywhere — in Spain the Communeros, 
in Flanders the mercantile class, in Germany the princes and later on the 
Protestants, while in Austria he had to ward off an enemy then terrible, 
the Ottomans, so that it was very difficult for him to give one and the same 
direction to all his means of action, scattered as they were over so many 
countries. The two rivals first sought allies. Francis, in the interview 
of the Camp (not Field, as generally rendered) of the Cloth of Gold, suc- 
ceeded only in offending the pride of the king of England, Henry VIII, 
by eclipsing him in elegance of splendor and chivalrous graces; while 
Charles, more modest, won Wolseley, that prince's prime minister, by promis- 
ing him the tiara, and thus secured alHance from England. Pope Leo X 
likewise declared in favor of him who seemed to be able to stop the fermen- 
tation of religious revolt in Germany. Francis began hostilities by re- 
proaching the emperor with not having carried out one of the chief clauses 
of the treaty of Noyon, namely, the restoration of French Navarre. Six 
thousand men invaded that country, and the duke of Bouillon attacked 
Luxemburg. But the French were beaten in Castile, and the imperial- 
ists would have captured Mezieres had not Bayard taken possession of the 



332 First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 

place (1521). In Italy Lautrec, left without resources and obliged to give 
way to his Swiss mercenaries, who demanded money, discharge or battle, 
was completely defeated at Locarno (La Bicoque, 1522). The loss of 
the Milanese entailed the defection of Venice and Genoa. Meanv/hile 
Charles V's old preceptor had become Pope Adrian VL 

Battle of Pavia and Treaties of Madrid and Cambrai. — The 

very existence of France was then menaced by the treason of the Constable 
de Bourbon, the last of the great feudal barons, who, when his plot was 
detected, had fled to Charles V's camp. He defeated the incapable Bon- 
nivet at Biagrasso, where Bayard was slain (1524), and led the imperial- 
ists into Provence. The difficulty of living there, the resistance of Mar- 
seilles and the uprising of the peasants obHged them to retreat in disorder. 
The French, with the king at their head, hurried in pursuit of them, and 
came up with them at Pavia. The artillery was doing marvelously well 
when Francis, charging with his cavalry, foolishly threw himself in front 
of his own guns. The battle was lost and the king himself became a prisoner 
(1525). Europe was in commotion and showed a disposition not to let 
France succumb. Italy, whose independence was threatened, and Henry 
VIII, whom Charles V's glory offended and whose minister Wolseley had 
twice been made a plaything by the emperor giving the promised tiara to 
others, entered into a league against the victor. But Francis I, impatient 
to end his captivity, signed the disastrous treaty of Madrid (1526), by 
which he ceded to Charles, with homage reserved, the province of Bur- 
gundy, abandoned Naples, Milan, Genoa, as well as suzerainty over 
Flanders and Artois, restored his property to Bourbon, and promised 
to marry the emperor's sister, the queen dowager of Portugal. Once 
free, he had the deputies of Burgundy declare that the king had no right 
to alienate a province of the kingdom. The em.peror treated Francis as a 
perjurer, and the latter called the former a liar; they challenged each 
other to a duel, and war was renewed. Italy was its first victim. Bourbon 
invaded it with an army of Lutherans v/hose leader, George Frondsberg, 
wanted to hang the Pope with a gold chain. The French renegade was 
killed while scaling the walls of Rome, but his horde captured the city 
and avencred him with abominable devastations and horrible cruelties 
(1527). Lautrec, who had recovered the Milanese, marched tcvv^ards 
Naples; but the defection of the Genoese fleet compromised the expedi- 
tion. He died of the plague, and a defeat at Landriano in Lombardy 
once more drove the French from Italy. Then Charles appeared there 
as master ; he obliged the dukes of Ferrara, Milan and Mantua to acknowl- 
edge themselves vassals of the empire, Savoy and Montferrat to abandon 



First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 333 

the French alliance, and Pope Clement VII to crown him king of Italy 
and emperor (at Bologna, 1529). France even signed the treaty of Cambrai, 
less humiliating than that of Madrid, since the emperor abandoned Bur- 
gundy, but )-et far from honorable, for the king of France deserted his Italian 
allies, abandoned his pretensions over Naples, and acknowledged Sforza as 
duke of Milan (1529). 

Luther at Worms and Wartburg.— But trouble had been brewing for 
Charles in Germany. A diet convened at Worms (152 1) had already shown 
the political im.portance of the Reformation, which seemed to have had as yet 
only a moral and theological bearing. At first the controversy concerning 
indulgences appeared only as a quarrel between monks disputing about a 
profitable privilege. Leo X, thinking the debate would remain confined to 
the Auj-ustinians and the Dominicans, had declared that "Brother Martin 
was a clever fellow." When the Pope became better informed and excom- 
municated him, Luther sought lay allies. He pubHshed an "Appeal to the 
Christian Nobility of the German Nation," a pamphlet that was very 
effective for propagating his movement, for the reformer offered to the 
barons the prospect of an easy territorial aggrandizement. Those who 
wished to reform the Church he advised to seize ecclesiastical domains; and 
this spohation was called secularization or appHcation to lay uses. The 
interregnum that followed Maximilian's death and the delays before Charles 
of Austria Vv-as elected favored every boldness on the part of the innovator. 
After his coronation the new emperor convened a diet at Worms to pacify 
the empire (Januar)', 1521). Luther, the chief instigator of the dissensions 
in Germany, was summoned to appear before the assemblage. He went 
there, ansv/ering the warnings of his friends with the boast that he would 
enter the city in the name of Jesus Christ even if there were as many devils 
there as there were tiles on the roofs. His journey was Hke a triumph. 
On his way the multitude sang canticles and attributed miracles to him. 
The reformer's assurance diminished Vv^hen he was introduced to the diet. 
Luther, hovv^ever, acknowledged his writings, refused to retract, and with- 
drew after declaring "As I stand here I cannot say anything else; so help 
me God!" 

The diet outlawed Luther throughout the whole empire and forbade the 
spreading of his teachings. But the emperor enforced respect for the pass- 
port he had given the reformer so as to enable him to return to Saxony. 
Luther was making his way slowly towards that country when, in the depth 
of a forest, horsemen carried him off secretly to the castle of Wartburg, 
owned by the Elector of Saxony. He lived nearly a year in this refuge under 
an assumed name, at one and the same time guest and prisoner of his prince. 



334 First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 

The emotion which first seized Germany when it learned of Luther's disap- 
pearance was soon followed by enthusiasm for the writings which he sent 
out from his retreat. He then won the intellectual mastery of Germany, 
undertook his poetic translation of the Bible, on which he spent over ten 
years and lavished pamphlets against his adversaries with a feverish excite- 
ment stimulated by supposed temptations from the Devil. During his 
seclusion at Wartburg he says he saw the Devil in the most indifferent objects, 
discussed with him, and sought to remove him by violence. 

Sacramentarians and Anabaptists. — Luther's sojourn at Wartburg 
left the field free to preachers less learned than him and less friendly to the 
nobility. The spirit of the Hussites began again to breathe over the empire, 
borrowing from the Scriptures, and especially from the Old Testament, 
the principles of a chimerical social equality. For a long time past the 
leveling of all classes was the dream haunting the Germans. "No one rises 
against the Divine order but the learned, the wise and the powerful; but 
the lowly cry to God and invoke His aid to obtain a new and good order," 
we read in a pretended plan of reform which the people attributed to the 
emperor Sigismund. To the lowly the new religious movement seemed an 
excellent opportunity for founding this new and good order. On all sides 
popular prophets arose. In Saxony, and especially in the industrial city 
of Zwickau, a preacher, Thomas Munzer, and a draper, Nicholas Storch, 
gathering around them twelve apostles, seventy-two disciples, and a guard of 
workingmen, seized the government of the city. They announced the 
destruction of the old empire and the rise in its stead of "the empire of Christ 
in which there would be no more kings or priests, the impious would be 
exterminated by the sword, and all property would become common. " The 
Zwickau apostles measured swords with the Wittenberg theologians. The 
archdeacon of that city, Carlostadt, convinced by Storch's inspired language, 
made a raid upon the churches at the head of a band of fanatics, stopped the 
celebration of mass, and broke the statues of the saints as idols condemned 
by the Bible. Carlostadt founded the sect of the Sacramentarians, which 
rejected the Catholic interpretation of the sacrament of the altar. Munzer 
still further simplified the practices of religion. Of all the sacraments 
he let scarcely any remain but baptism, which he refused to children, but 
conferred several times on adults, first as an initiation into Christianity, 
and then as a reparation if, from any serious fault, one should cease to 
merit the title Christian. His adepts, the Anabaptists or rebaptizers, 
took up arms to maintain the popular claims, and kindled in Germany the 
terrible civil war known as that of the peasants. 

The Peasants' War— South Germany Devastated. -The Anabap- 



First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 335 

tists seized authority in several small cities of Thuringia and Saxony. Mun- 
zer succeeded in enrolling eight or ten thousand artisans and miners, who 
marched against the barons. These poor men, armed for the most part 
with pikes and hammers, had as their war cry: "Gospel!" "Gospel!" Their 
prophet had promised them the support of legions of angels; but they were 
crushed by the artillery and scattered by the cavalry of the princes in the 
battle of Frankenhausen (May 15, 1525). Munzer died by torture. Much 
longer and more bitter in southern Germany, the war of the peasants 
ruined for ages aften\'ards the prosperity of Suabia and Franconia. In 
these two countries the popular uprising had long been prepared. In 
1502 the peasants of the neighborhood of Speyer had already formed the 
Shoe League (Bundschuh). Assembled around a banner displaying the 
picture of a shoe, they swore to obey only the emperor, to abolish quit- 
rents, tithes, and other feudal dues. Tvvelve years later another very 
popular association, the Poor Conrad, reinforced the action of the Bund- 
schuh. Lastly, southern Germany was in perpetual alarm from the robber 
knights. Unemployed soldiers and criminal or ruined barons formed the 
noble proletariate of the robber knights, who for three centuries lived by 
levying ransom on merchants and traders. The Reformation, by con- 
demning the wealth of the Church, stimulated the greed of the robber 
knights and made them hope to acquire rich foundations at the expense of 
the prelates. The chief of these brigands, Franz von Sickingen, was the 
first to answer the appeal made by Luther to the German nobility. He 
threw himself on the electorate of Treves, but was defeated by the arch- 
bishop, and died of his wounds in one of his own castles, which was soon 
stormed by the adversary whom he had provoked(i523). 

The peasants in their turn, when the Anabaptist prophets appeared, 
made a rush on the abbeys and bishoprics to rob the clergy of their property. 
But no more did they spare the barons. At Weinsberg, a Suabian city in- 
vaded by the "holy army of the Union," they tore to pieces with picks the 
count of Helfenstein and twenty-four gentlemen who had undertaken to 
defend the place. The peasants then in upper Germany numbered a 
hundred thousand. After their first successes they convened a popular par- 
liament at Heilbronn and adopted the Twelve Articles that satisfied their 
desire for "evangelical fraternity." Ere long they took as their general 
the last of the robber knights, Gcetz von Berlichingen, the indefatigable 
warrior who, having lost a hand in one of his fights, put an iron gauntlet in 
its place. This experienced captain soon saw the inferiority of his troops, 
and abandoned the peasants' army before the battle of Koenigshofen 
(May 30, 1525), in which it suffered a decisive defeat. The leagues of the 
peasants were conquered by the knights of the Suabian League. As means 



3 36 First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 

of repression the nobles had recourse to the practices of their adversaries, 
pillage and burning. They condemned twelve thousand rebels to death. 
Many peasants emigrated. On those who remained the feudal charges 
weighed more heavily than before, so that southern Germany never fully 
recovered from the savage devastation to which it had been subjected by 
the Anabaptist revolt. 

Lutheranism Established in North Germany. — Luther, whom the 
Catholics held responsible for the rash fanaticism of the rebels, in two 
pamphlets disavowed the "heavenly prophets," as he ironically called the 
Anabaptist apostles, and the "hominidal and pillaging hordes of the 
peasants." By his cruel invectives he sought to please the princes; he 
encouraged in the barons what he censured in the peasants, namely, greed 
to seize Church property. The confiscations of the domains to the Catholic 
clergy by the lay lords, the secularizations, were to be, as Luther ver)^ well 
knew, the chief motive of the barons' adhesion to the Reformation. Philip, 
landgrave of Hesse, and John, the new Elector of Saxony, separated from 
the Catholic Church soon after the revolt of the peasants. Another Albert 
of Hohenzollern, grand master of the Teutonic Knights, married and 
secularized Prussia, transforming that Crusade land into a patrimonial 
duchy and the soldier monks into lay vassals (1525). Pastors recruited 
from all classes of society and chosen by the princes more on account of 
their zeal for the Reformation than for their learning, were substituted 
for the Catholic priests in the parishes, for whose former revenues salaries 
were substituted. The piety of the reformed princes was very parsimonious 
towards this new clergy, though it was carefully placed in dependence upon 
them through the intermediation of superintendents or visitors, who took 
the place of the bishops, and in spite of the family burdens that increased 
its needs. The reformed pastors married, obeying the precept and example 
of Luther, who, during his retirement at Wartburg, had written a treatise 
on the monastic vows, inviting priests and nuns to throw off ecclesiastical 
celibacy, and who afterwards married Catharine von Bora, an ex-nun (1525). 

Francis I*s Alliances — Soliman*s Successes. — Out of this change 
came some comfort for Francis I who naturally felt humiliated by the treaty 
of Cambrai. He prepared for revenge by entering into negotiations which 
show that the spirit of religion, one of the characteristics of the Middle Ages, 
was giving way to the political spirit, the only inspiration of governments in 
modern times. He formed alliances with the Protestants of Germany 
and with Soliman, the sultan of the Turks, as he was to do later with the 
Reformers of Sweden and Denmark. Soliman (i 520-1 566), a promoter 



First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 337 

of the arts, a protector of literature, and author of the code entitled the 
Khanounname, won the triple surname of Conqueror, Magnificent, and 
Law-giver. In 1521 he had captured Belgrade, the bulwark of Hungary; 
■in 1522 he had taken Rhodes from the Knights of St. John in spite of the 
heroic resistance of the grand master, Villiers de I'lsle-Adam, who held out 
for five months; and in 1526, having crossed the Danube with two hundred 
thousand men, he had destroyed the Hungarian army at Mohacz, where 
Louis n, the last of the jagiellos, perished. The crown of Hungary then 
fell to Ferdinand of Austria. Against this brother of Charles V Soliman 
supported a pretender of the Magyar race, John Zapolya. All Hungary was 
ravaged, even Buda fell into his power, and he penetrated into Austria as 
far as the walls of Vienna, which repelled tv^'enty assaults. To make this 
reverse be forgotten, the sultan with his own hands crowned his vassal in 
Buda as king of Flungary. Two years later he appeared again in Austria 
at the head of three hundred thousand m.en. Fortunately a small fortress 
in Styria, Graetz, detained him a whole month. It was during the siege of 
that place he received the first embassy from Francis I. He was counting 
on invading Germany. But Charles V had had time to collect a hundred 
and fifty thousand combatants. Lutherans and Catholics had joined hands 
against the Crescent, and Francis I did not dare to support his formidable 
ally with a diversion on the Rhine or in Italy. There was no general action, 
however. After six weeks the sultan learned that a Spanish fleet had 
entered the Dardanelles and was threatening Constantinople; therefore 
he withdrew. But the Turkish navy was developing, under the direction 
of the famous Khayr Eddin Barbarossa. That corsair, having become 
admiral of the Ottoman fleets, traversed the Mediterranean with one hun- 
dred vessels, and, while the sultan was in Asia taking Tauris and Bagdad 
from the Persians, he seized Tunis, which became a new nest of pirates for 
the whole Spanish and Italian coast. Charles V sent two expeditions 
against them. On the first, with four hundred vessels commanded by 
Doria, he seized Guletta at the entrance to the bay of Tunis, and freed 
twenty-two thousand captives (1535); but, less fortunate six years later at 
Algiers, he saw his fleet scattered by a storm, and with difficulty saved some 
remnants of it. The emperor gave better protection to the commerce of the 
Christian peoples by ceding the island of Malta to the Knights of Rhodes, 
who for a long time held the pirates in check. While Charles V was assum- 
ing the part of defender of Christendom, Francis I appeared to be its enemy. 
In the very year of the Tunis expedition he had signed with Soliman the 
first of the treaties called Capitulations. 

Confession of Augsburg — Melanchthon. — After Charles V had 
22 • 



338 First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 

imposed the treaty of Cambrai on Francis I and brought the whole of Italy 
under the imperial power, he resolved to visit Germany a second time, in 
order to pacify that country, which had become the bulwark of Christendom. 
The imperial decree forbidding the continuance of the Lutheran propaganda 
was answered with a solemn protest from eighteen cities and six princes 
at the diet of Speyer (1529). From that day the Reformers were also called 
Protestants. In the following diet, which he opened at Augsburg and 
presided over, the emperor asked the Protestants to draw up in writing the 
chief articles of their belief. Charles V hoped that a discussion would take 
place on the Reformers' propositions and that a Council would, by making 
some concessions, restore the urrity of the Christian Church. Perhaps only 
one man shared the emperor's generous illusion. That man was the 
theologian whom the Reformers chose as interpreter, the learned and 
conciliatory Melanchthon, the author of the Augsburg Confession (1530). 
Reuchlin's nephew, Philip Schwarzerde, famous under the Greek translation 
of this name, was at the age of twenty-two called to the university of Witten- 
berg to establish the study of Greek there. He created everything, even 
the books he used for his teaching. Naturally gentle and prudent, he at 
first felt only anxious distrust in regard to Luther's turbulent spirit. But 
the deferential and tender admiration which the reformer showed for him 
gradually won him over to the cause oftheWittemberg theologians. Melanch- 
thon's moderation and persuasive speech influenced many minds whom 
Luther's imperious domineering repelled. The latter thus characterized 
his friend's talent and his own : " I was born to take the field and fight against 
troops and demons; this is why my books are very impetuous and warlike — 
I am the rude forester who must clear and level the way. But Master 
Philip goes his way gently and tranquilly; he cultivates and plants, sows 
and waters with pleasure, according to the gifts which God has richly 
granted to him." It is not astonishing that the new Church wished to 
take advantage of the attractions of this choice mind to influence in its 
favor the emperor and the still wavering princes. But the Reformers 
neutralized Melanchthon's qualities by robbing him of all independence. 
Luther, banished from the emperor's presence, multiplied his messages, 
the Reformed princes constantly advanced fresh demands, and Melanch- 
thon, much to his regret, revised his work, ever showing more and more 
the disagreements between the Protestant belief and the Catholic faith. 

The Schmalkalden League— Anabaptists at Munster.— By way of 
answer to the Augsburg Confession Charles V asked the Protestant princes 
for new concessions; he left them liberty to practise their religion until the 
next Council, but forbade them to propagate it outside their own States. 



First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 339 

The Elector of Saxony and the landgrave of Hesse spurned the toleration 
that was offered to them; they left Augsburg before the close of the diet, and 
the year 1530 had not yet expired when, associating with the Brunswick 
dukes, the prince of Anhalt, and the Mansfeld counts, as well as eleven 
Protestant cities, they formed an Evangelical League at Schmalkalden. 
These confederates appealed to a "free, universal and Christian" Council, 
but they entered into alliance with the foreign sovereigns to extend the 
Protestant propaganda by force. In 1534, aided by help from Francis I, 
they restored Duke Ulrich, the terror of his subjects, in Wurtemberg, from 
which his tyranny had caused him to be driven. In 1535 the League 
increased, and a new pact bound the Reformed powers together for ten years. 
The Catholics and the Protestants were again kept from coming to 
blows by a double diversion and compelled to act in harmony against the 
Anabaptists and the Turks. The Anabaptist sect, though cruelly perse- 
cuted, had not disappeared. Its enthusiasm increased at the sight of the 
many sufferings endured by its adepts with indomitable firmness and joy 
in sacrifice that moved even the imperial judges. The Anabaptists of the 
Netherlands especially, directly exposed to the wrath of Charles V, cherished 
a passionate desire for revenge. Knipperdolling offered them a refuge in 
the episcopal city of Miinster of which he was mayor. There the Anabap- 
tists became so numerous that they drove out the inhabitants who did not 
want to let themselves be rebaptized. The bishop left, and the churches 
were destroyed or dismantled, because the height of their towers insulted 
Christian equality. On the market-place and on the cathedral hill, then 
called Mount Sion, there were alternations of fraternal banquets and 
executions. Both these ceremonies were presided over by the prophet- 
kings who sat **on the throne of David." The first of these kings, John 
Mathys, a Haarlem baker, in a momentary ecstasy pretended he was 
invulnerable and threw himself with pike in hand on the bishop of Miinster's 
troops who were besieging the city. He was immediately killed. His 
successor, the handsome John of Leyden, made polyganiy a religious law, 
married sixteen queens, and fed his court abundantly while his people were 
starving. After two months the united efforts of Catholics and Protestants 
triumphed over the resistance of Miinster (April- June, I535)-. The 
Hanseatic cities, Liibeck and Hamburg, were also for some time in the 
hands of the Anabaptists. Popular revolt came very near triumphing with 
the mayor of Liibeck, Wullenweber. But if that adventurous magistrate 
succumbed sooner than the Miinster prophets, he had at least the power 
to drag the Hansa into the northern wars that ruined it. 

War Renewed between Charles V and Francis I.— On the return of 



340 First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 

the first of his African expeditions (1535), when the emperor was in the full 
infatuation of his glory, by an ambush he provoked a fresh war against 
France, by causing to be seized and executed an agent whom the king was 
sending to Constantinople. A second invasion of Provence succeeded no 
better than the former one. He found a country devastated systematically 
by Montmorency, who refused to give him battle, and he made a disastrous 
retreat (1536). Francis then summoned him to appear before the parlia- 
ment as a disloyal vassal for his fiefs of Flanders and Artois. The struede 
seemed likely to lead to violence when a great victory won by Soliman over 
the Austrians at Essek and Barbarossa's ravages made the emperor more 
pacific, and Francis I, satisfied with having conquered Piedmont, signed at 
Nice, through the mediation of the Pope, a ten years' truce with his rival 
(1538). The two sovereigns seemed reconciled. In 1540, Ghent having 
revolted, Francis offered to let Charles pass through France on his way to 
subdue it. The emperor accepted, and promised to restore the Milanese. 
But scarcely had he reached Flanders when he repudiated his promise, and 
ordered the assassination of two more French envoys on their v ay to Turkey. 
This attack and the Algiers failure led Francis I to take up arms again. 
His fleet, united with that of Barbarossa, captured Nice, and the duke of 
Enghien won a handsome victory at Ceresole d'Alba (1544). But in the 
north Charles penetrated to within fifteen leagues of Paris, while his ally, 
the king of England, laid siege to Boulogne. Scarcity of provisions and 
disease stopped the imperialists, who signed the treaty of Crespy (1544), 
restoring matters to the conditions existing before the war. Henry VHI 
continued hostilities and captured Boulogne, but only to give it back, for 
a payment of two millions, by the treaty of Ardres (1546). The following 
yeai Francis I died. 

More Wars of Religion in Germany. — Charles V, perhaps exaggerat- 
ing the means at his disposal in Germany, resolved, as soon as he had con- 
cluded his last peace with Francis I, to destroy Protestantism by dispossess- 
ing the Protestant princes. An effort at conciliation, the most sincere 
of all those that had been tried on both sides, had failed at Ratisbon (1541). 
The Catholic Church had opened the Council of Trent (1545), to which 
the Protestants had refused to send their theologians, and Luther had 
died uttering a last exclamation of hatred against the Papacy (1546). 
The Reformation party had recently obtained the adhesion of the Elector 
of Brandenburg and the Elector Palatine. It was preponderant in northern 
Germany when Charles V again appeared in the empire. He easily 
detached from his coreligionists the ambitious Maurice of Saxony, a younger 
member of the Electoral house of that name, who coveted the dignity of 



First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 341 

his elders. Thus with superior forces he caught unawares the Elector 
John Frederick of Saxony at Muhlberg (1547) and made him prisoner as 
well as the landgrave of Hesse. Charles V then thought he could control 
the religious situation in Germany with an act of his imperial will. He 
promulgated a provisional religious regulation, the Augsburg Interim, far 
from favorable to the Protestants (1548). 

But the Augsburg Interim satisfied neither the Reformers nor the 
Catholics, who w^ere shocked at the authority which the emperor arrogated to 
himself in the matter of religion. Maurice of Saxony, once in possession 
of the Electorate which he had coveted, returned to the Protestant camp. 
While, by the treaty of Friedwald, the Protestant princes abandoned the 
Three Bishoprics to Henry II, king of France, Maurice of Saxony, unex- 
pectedly invading the Tyrol with Protestant troops, forced the emperor to 
flee and negotiated with him, as one power with another, the treaty of 
Passau (1552). In vain did Charles assemble the barons, Protestant as 
well as Catholic, to lead them to the siege of Metz, which, moreover, he was 
unable to win back from the French; in vain did the situation seem to 
improve by the death of Maurice of Saxony (1553); the emperor, over- 
whelmed with infirmities and discouraged by his failures, now thought only 
of abdicating, and, to as so secure a less troubled reign for his brother and 
successor, Ferdinand I, he laid the foundations of a religious pacification at 
the diet of Augsburg (1555). The peace of Augsburg recognized the exis- 
tence in Germany of the Lutheran religion, guaranteed to the Protestant 
princes possession of the ecclesiastical estates they had secularized before 
the treaty of Passau, and authorized each prince to impose on his subjects 
the religion he preferred. Thus was the sanction of law given to the form 
of despotism summed up in the maxim: Ciijus regio, illius et religto-" Every 
prince his own subjects' pope." Consequently, in after years, several 
of the principalities changed their religious denomination, the Palatinate 
as often as five times. 

An Aftermath of Personal Rivalry. — After all this waste of blood 
and treasure, neither Francis I nor Charles V could secure universal mon- 
archy. France had lost none of its territory, and Germany had retained its 
liberties, that is, its divisions, for in each section the prince or princeling 
was an absolute ruler. Only Italy was found under foreign control, with 
the Spaniards encamped at Naples and at Milan. An energetic Pope, Paul 
IV, undertook to drive them out; and to succeed in this he counted on 
France. War was therefore resumed. A French army was sent towards 
the Netherlands, and another to Italy. The aim was to confine Philip II to 
Spain. The duke of Guise had already traversed the Milanese and was 



342 First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 

marching on Naples when he was recalled to France by a defeat at Saint- 
Quentin. This bold captain struck a great blow; he unexpectedly laid siege 
to Calais as winter was coming on, and captured it after a siege of eight days 
(1558); but the Spaniards were ever on the Somme, and a defeat inflicted 
on Marshal de Thermes at Gravelines disappointed the hope of driving them 
out rapidly. Italy, moreover, was at their discretion, and the plan conceived, 
looked as if it could not be carried out. Henry II negotiated the treaty of 
Cateau-Cambresis, by which France restored to the duke of Savoy his 
States minus some cities, Siena to the Medici, and Corsica to the Genoese; 
but France held on to the Three Bishoprics and, for half a million crowns, 
to the city of Calais (1559). Spanish domination was, then, strengthened 
in the north and south of the Italian peninsula, and the princes, who still 
remained there, had now but a shadow of independence. The French kings 
had thrown France into these wars to conquer Naples and Milan, and it was 
to Spain they had given them. But, owing to those rivalries of princes that 
had occupied the attention and the forces of the monarchs for forty years, 
the reformation had extended over half of Europe, and the peace of Cateau- 
Cambresis had put an end to the wars of Italy only to permit the kings 
of France and Spain to begin, with the aid of the Pope and the Catholic 
clergy, the wars of religion. Before recording these let us glance at religious 
changes in other States than Germany. 

The Reformation in Scandinavia and Switzerland. — ^The new 
doctrines had by this time triumphed in nearly all of northern Europe. 
Gustavus Vasa, who had delivered Sweden from the Danish yoke, welcomed 
them so as to humble the espiscopal aristocracy, to gather money into his 
empty treasury, and to raise himself to absolute power. In Denmark, on 
the contrary, the revolution was brought about for the benefit of the lay 
aristocracy, which suppressed the States General, held royalty in tutelage 
for one hundred and twenty years, and bent the people under the yoke of a 
harsh slavery. Denmark forced the new religion on its dependencies, 
Norway and Iceland, where stubborn resistance was offered to it, but in vain. 

In Switzerland the Reformation originated as early as in Germany, and 
independent of Luther. Zwingli had declared in 1715 that the Gospel is 
the only rule of faith. The Evangelical Religion spread through German 
Switzerland except in the primitive cantons of Luzern, Uri, Schytz and 
Unterwalden, which remained faithful to the old worship. The war which 
broke out first in 1529 and again in 1531, when Zwingli perished in the battle 
of Cappel, was favorable to the Catholics; each canton, however, held 
sovereign power over religion; but the Evangelical doctrine was excluded 
from the common bailiwicks. This was a defeat for Protestantism; on the 



First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 343 

other hand, it acquired Geneva, for a long time dissatisfied with its bishop 
who was also its temporal sovereign, and divided between the parties of the 
Mamelukes and the Huguenots (Eidgenossen). Owing to the support of 
Bern, the Huguenot party gained the upper hand and maintained the inde- 
pendence of the city against Savoy (1536). Just then Calvin arrived there. 
He was a Frenchman from Noyon, who had recently published a remarkable 
book, the "Christian Institution." in which he condemned everything that 
did not seem to him prescribed in the Gospel, while Luther, less bold, let 
everything remain that seemed to him not to be formally contrary to it. His 
eloquence, the austerity of his life, and his radical doctrines gave him an 
authority in Geneva which he used to make that joyous city a gloomy 
cloister in which every trifling word and action was punished as a crime. A 
poet was decapitated for his verses, and Michael Servetus was burned for 
having viewed the Trinity differently from the spiritual dictator. But owing 
to him Geneva became the citadel, and as it were the sanctuary, of Calvinism. 

The Reformation in the Netherlands and France. — ^The seventeen 
provinces of the Netherlands formed, under the direction of an Austrian or 
a Spanish governor, a federal State; and each of them had its own constitu- 
tion and its own assembly. These free institutions, the independent spirit 
of the Dutch population, and the proximity of Germany, favored the pro- 
pagation of the Lutheran reformation in that country. But Charles V 
suppressed it there by the stringencies of a special inquisition that put over 
thirty thousand persons to death. Lutheranism, however, gave way to 
Calvinism, which came down from Switzerland through Alsace or crossed 
over from England during the reign of Edward VI, and which spread rapidly 
in the Batavian provinces. 

It was only at a rather late date that Protestantism obtained a foothold 
in France. The Sorbonne refuted the new doctrines, and the king repressed 
them by force. In the last place, and this was the chief point, abuses 
were rarer among the clergy of that country, because the Church had less 
wealth and power than elsewhere; and if many provincial noblemen 
regretted the domains formerly ceded by their ancestors to the Church, if 
the independent teachings of the innovators pleased their feudal spirit, 
and if desires for political enfranchisement were mingled with their desires 
for religious liberty, the people of the large cities remained thoroughly 
Catholic. It was not Lutheranism that made any headway in France, it 
was Calvinism, whose starting point was Calvin's "Christian Institution" 
(1535). Francis I, who supported the Protestants in Germany and entered 
into alliance with the Turks, would not tolerate Protestants in his own realm. 
He had Lutherans burned before his eyes, and approved of the horrible 



344 First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 

massacre of the Waldenses. Henry II, by the edict of Chateaubriant, in- 
flicted the death penalty on heretics. He even, in the presence of the whole 
parHament, had two magistrates arrested who were suspected of heresy, and 
one of them, Anne Dubourg, went to the stake. As is ever the case, persecu- 
tion Vv^as to lead to plots and a terrible struggle. 

It was Calvinism also that won the day in Scotland. After the death 
of James V his widow, Mary of Guise, left the management of affairs to 
Cardinal Beaton, who defended Catholicism with measures of extreme 
severity, and was assassinated (1546). Ere long the Reformation won the 
more important part of Scotland (the Lowlands), where John Knox, called 
back from Geneva, estabhshed Presbyterianism, which suppressed every 
semblance of hierarchy among the ministers of religion (1561). 

The Reformation in England. — Not the work of the people, but that 
of a despot, who found the country disposed to that revolution by repeated 
disputes with Rome since the time of King John, the Reformation in Eng- 
land was at first little more than a schism. Smitten with Anne Boleyn, he 
asked Pope Clement VII to dissolve his marriage v/ith Catharine of Aragon 
and, as the Pope was hesitating, he had his Parliament decree the divorce. 
Then excommunicated, he proclaimed himself head of the AngHcan Church 
(1534), suppressed the monastic orders and confiscated their property 
(1539). But while separating from the Holy See, Henry pretended to 
remain orthodox. He retained the title of Defender of the Faith, which the 
Pope had conferred on him for a refutation of Luther; and he punished with 
death as well those who denied the Real Presence as those who disputed the 
king's religious supremacy. Spoliation followed murder; and that people 
which, from love of rest, had, after the war of the Two Roses, abandoned 
its political liberty, s2lw its money, blood, and even beliefs, sacrificed to a 
capricious tyrant. But by permi::ting the publication, in order to justify 
his usurpations, of an English translation of the Bible, Henry VIII favored, 
without meaning to do so, the spirit of examination that produced so many 
sects in England, and thus prepared the way for political as well as religious 
revolution. His decapitated Catholicism, as his system has been called, 
made way under Edward VI for Protestantism pure and simple (1547). 
A Catholic reaction took place after Edward's death (1553). Warwick, 
leader of the Reform party, placed Lady Jane Grey on the throne. Mary, 
Henry's eldest daughter, succeeded in deposing the Nine Days' Queen, and, 
in consequence of a later conspiracy, had her put to death. Then she 
married Philip, the heir to the throne of Spain, and reconciled England with 
the Holy See. This restoration was marked by many death penalties, in 
consequence of which Protestants have called Mary Bloody. Dragged by 



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First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 345 

Philip II into war against France, she lost Calais in consequence, and did not 
long survive that disaster. She often repeated that, if her heart v^ere opened, 
the name of that city Vvould he read upon it (1558). The Anglican Church 
such as it has existed ever since, was established by her successor, Elizabeth. 

Character of the Three Reformed Churches. — ^Thus in less than 
half a century Svvitzerland, Great Britain, Scandinavia, half of Germany and 
a part of France had separated from Catholicism. The principle of the 
Reformation being, theoretically, free examination, many sects had already 
arisen, and their number was to go on increasing, but three great systems 
predominated — Lutheranism in northern Germany and the Scandinavian 
States, Calvinism in Switzerland, France, the Netherlands and Scotland 
and Anglicanism in England. They had a common dogma, justification 
by grace. But, by a happy inconsistency, the members of these three 
Churches, whose duty it seemed to think only of Heaven, have ever taken 
the greatest interest in the affairs of earth, and many Reformers have 
abandoned their favorite dogma to give their attention to works; the 
theologian has made way for the moralist — Calvinism is really only the 
teaching of human morality. 

Of the three new Churches the farthest from the old orthodoxy was 
Calvinism, which regarded the Supper as a mere commemoration. The 
Lutherans admitted the real presence, but not transubstantiation; as for the 
Anglicans, they were originally Calvinists in dogma and Catholics in liturgy 
for their Church, with its archbishops, bishops, and large revenues, differed 
from the Catholic Church only in simplicity of costume, cold austerity of 
worship, the use of the common tongue, and marriage of the clergy. Subject 
to the royal supremacy, its existence was closely connected with the mainten- 
ance of the monarchy, and in England the clergy were what they were in 
the Catholic countries, the mainstay of royalty. The Presbyterian Church 
of Scotland, democratic like all the Calvinistic Churches, had priests all 
of equal rank; the Puritans would even suppress the delegation of the priest- 
hood — every Christian would be a priest when he had inspiration. The 
Lutheran countries retained bishops, but without wealth or liberty, as the 
prince inherited almost all the spiritual power taken from the Pope and 
drew up the formula of faith. "Luther," said Melanchthon, "has put on 
our heads an iron yoke instead of a wooden one." 

Consequences of the Reformation. — ^The religious revolution, there- 
fore, at first strengthened the political revolution, since to the civil rights 
of the princes it added that of governing consciences, except in the Calvinist 
communities, which acknowledged spiritual power only in the assembly 



346 First Wars of Ambition, Rivalry and Religion 

of the faithful. From the point of view of general civilization, this insur- 
rection of the spirit of examination brought no aid in the early times to 
the progress of public reason. In Germany every grade of intellect was 
absorbed in theology. Men neglected ancient literature and concerned 
themselves only, as in the halcyon days of scholasticism, with trivial ques- 
tions, simply because they were inextricable and insoluble. The Renais- 
sance died of this; painters and poets disappeared before the iconoclastic 
wrath of some and the theological violence of others. Luther and Calvin, 
the former giving spiritual power to princes and the latter burning Servetus 
and teaching predestination, were not, as many have wished to represent 
them, the fathers of modern Hberty. But often in a field that man tills and 
sows there grows a crop that was not expected. The rejection of the Pope's 
absolute authority in the spiritual order naturally led to the rejection of 
the absolute authority of kings in the philosophical and social order. Luther 
and Calvin, though they far from intended it, led to Bacon and Descartes, 
as Bacon and Descartes unwittingly led to Locke and Mirabeau. 



CHAPTER XXII 



Second Period of the Wars of Religion 



Reforms in Catholic Church Government.— The Papacy, taken 
unawares, had in a few years lost half of its empire. Reawakened by 
•that stern warning, it began, both upon itself and on the Church, an ad- 
mirable work of reform that reflects honor on four great Popes, Paul III, 
Paul IV, Pius V and Sixtus V. The tribunal of the Rota, the Peniten- 
tiaria and the Roman Chancellery received an improved organization. 
A new Inquisition, whose highest court sat in Rome, was instituted in 
1542 to seek out and punish every offence against the faith. Neither 
rank nor dignity could shield from the jurisdiction of the Inquisitors, 
who went to work with such energy that the roads leading from Italy to 
Switzerland and Germany were covered with fugitives. The Congrega- 
tion of the Index permitted the printing of a book only after it had been 
examined and, if necessary, corrected. There were punishments for 
persons and destruction for writings. These means applied with Roman 
perseverance succeeded, and orthodoxy was saved in the peninsula. But 
the enslaving of the ItaUans to the house of Austria had suppressed po- 
litical Hfe and public spirit. Men ceased to think, and art as well as lit- 
erature decHned. Nor did morals gain outside of the direct influence of 
rehgion — lovers and banditti answered for pubhc and private morality. 
Where no citizens, soldiers, artists, poets and writers are to be found, one 
need not look for men. 

The Inquisition was a means of defence; and for attack the Holy See 
multiplied the militia fighting in its name. First, the old monastic orders 
were reformed — in 1522 the Camaldules, and in 1525 the Franciscans, 
from whom sprang the Capuchins. Then, new orders were founded — in 
1524 the Theatines, in 1530 the Barnabites, and in 1540 the Jesuits, whose 
statutes reveal one of the strongest politico-religious conceptions ever 
put in practice. Besides the ordinary vows, the Jesuits took one of absolute 
obedience to the Holy See, and, instead of shutting themselves up in the 
recess of a cloister, they lived in the world so as to grasp every means of 
influence. Their professed members went everywhere to keep the faith- 

347 



348 Second Period of the Wars of Religion 

ful in the fold or to bring heretics and barbarians into it; their spiritual 
coadjutors and scholastics were to take charge of the education of young 
men. When Ignatius of Loyola died (1556), the Society had already 
fourteen provinces, one hundred colleges, and one thousand members; 
Spain and Italy were won, Austria and Bavaria v/ere occupied, France 
was encroached upon, and bold missionaries were at work in Brazil, India, 
Japan and Ethiopia. 

The Council of Trent. — Thus strengthened, the Church could lay 
aside the ideas of concihation that had been entertained on several occasions, 
but which the Protestant princes had made to fail so as not to be obhged 
to m.ake restitution of the ecclesiastical estates, and the Council of Trent 
proclaimed the inflexibility of the Catholic doctrines. Convened in 1545 
by Paul III, and presided over by his legates, it was subscribed to by ele- 
ven cardinals, twenty-five archbishops, one hundred and sixty-eight bishops, 
thirty-nine proxies of absent bishops, and seven generals of orders. The 
Italian prelates were in the majority, usually twice as many as the others, 
and voting was done individually and not by nation, which made them mas- 
ters of the Council. The ambassadors of the Catholic powers attended the 
deliberations. Transferred from Trent to Bologna in 1546, and restored to 
Trent in 1551, the Council dispersed in 1552 on the approach of the Luther- 
ans under Maurice of Saxony, and remained interrupted for ten years, when 
Paul IV tried, with the aid of France, to overthrow Spanish rule in Italy. 
The duke of Alva's sv/ord having ended this struggle to the advantage of 
Spain, Pius IV abandoned the temporal cause of ItaUan independence, but 
he was indemnified spiritually by the last decrees of the Council of Trent, 
which, instead of rising above the Pope as the Fathers of Constance and 
Basel had aimed, bowed to his authority. The Pontiff remained the sole 
judge of the changes to be brought about in discipline, the supreme inter- 
preter of the canons, the undisputed head of the bishops, and infalHble 
in matters of faith. Rome, then, could console itself for the final loss of a 
part of Europe with seeing its power doubled in the Catholic nations of 
the South grouping religiously around it. 

Strength of the Rejuvenated Papacy. — As king, the Pope also dis- 
pensed with pages. After Pius V, who, in the victory ofLepantowon 
over the Turks by Don John of Austria, celebrated a sort of revival of the 
Crusades, and Gregory XIII, who attached his name to the useful reform 
of the calendar (1582), Sixtus V (1585-1590) restored order in his States 
by showing the inflexibihty of Louis XL He purged the Roman Cam- 
pagna of the brigands who had been infesting it, restored the finances, 



Second Period of the Wars of Religion 349 

enlarged and embellished his capital, whose population increased to one 
hundred thousand souls, built the Vatican Library, and annexed to it a 
printing establishment for the production of the sacred books and the writ- 
ings of the Fathers. 

Thus, reform in the temporal administration of the Papal States and 
in the internal government of the Church was the result of the efforts 
of Catholicism in the second half of the sixteenth century and the cause 
of its greatness in the following age. Discipline having been strengthened 
and the scandal of wordly life in prelates restrained, the religious spir- 
it revived; asceticism and enthusiasm reappeared. Men once more saw 
miracles, saints, martyrs, those whom the Propaganda had sent to the 
dangerous missions of the two worlds. But in Rome there had been hope 
of something else from this restoration of Catholicism in its lessened empire. 
The image of Gregory VII had passed before the eyes of his successors; 
and the regenerated Church had taken up again the ambition of its great 
Pontiffs. Democratic in the early ages, in the Middle Ages aristocratic 
with its powerful bishops who, on occasions, threatened the Pope with 
excommunication, with Councils imposing their will, it had come, by 
following the bent of the civil powers and by the need of defending itself, 
to absolute royalty. Unfortunately for it, this constitution of the Papal 
monarchy came when the temporal monarchies were too strong to yield 
to any authority whatsoever. The decisions of the Council of Trent 
regarding discipline were not accepted in France, nor even in Spain, and 
the Catholic sovereigns arrogated to themselves a part of the prerogatives 
which the Protestant princes had seized by main force. But when the 
authority of these kings gave way under the blows of a new political revolu- 
tion, the Papacy in the nineteenth century took up again the work of the 
sixteenth. It now wields a greater power and commands more respect, 
even from those not subject to its authority, than ever before. 

Dominions of Philip II. — ^The Catholic Church as rejuvenated in 
the middle of the sixteenth century could speak for itself — could war with 
words; but it needed an arm to war also with the sword. It found two 
such men, in the sixteenth centur}^ the son of Charles V and his successor 
in Spain, PhiUp II, and in the seventeenth the heir of his German posses- 
sions, Ferdinand II of Austria. PhiHp, whom Protestants have called 
the Southern Devil, was master of Sicily and Sardinia, Naples and Milan 
in Italy; of Flanders, Artois, Franche Comte and Roussillon in France; 
of the Netherlands at the mouths of the Scheldt, the Meuse and the Rhine; 
of Tunis, Oran, Cape Verde and the Canaries in Africa; of Mexico, Peru, 
Chile and the Antilles in America; and lastly, of the Philippines in Ocean- 



350 Second Period of the Wars of Religion 

ica. He had numberless seaports, a powerful fleet, the best disciplined 
troops and the ablest generals in Europe, and the inexhaustible treasures of 
the New World. This domination he further increased, in 158 1, by the 
acquisition of Portugal and its immense colonial empire. The sun never 
set on his States, and it was then said: "When Spain moves, the world 
trembles. " So much power did not suffice for his ambition. As a Catholic, 
he hated the Protestants; as an absolute king, he dreaded them. From 
interest and conviction he set himself up as the armed head of Catholicism 
which might, from gratitude, raise him to supreme power in western Europe. 
This was the thought of his whole life, and he shrank from no means to 
crush the hostile principle. To this struggle he devoted rare talents; on 
it he spent all his military strength and all his gold, which he lavished with 
open hand to suborn assassination in Holland, in England conspiracy, and 
in France civil war. We shall see with what success. 

Character of This Period. — When the kings of France and Spain had 
signed the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis (1559), they did so to carry into 
government the new spirit animating the Church and to wage pitiless war 
on heresy. The one took it upon himself to suppress it in France, the other 
to keep it out of Italy and Spain, and then to crush it in the netherlands, 
and England. Upon the death of Henry H his sons, the last of the Valois, 
continued his plan, and at first needed only advice from Spain. The eldest, 
Francis H, reigned less than eighteen months (1559-60); the second, Charles 
IX, was twenty-four when he died (1574); and the third (d. 1589), who alone 
reached full maturity, always remained in a sort of minority, from which 
he emerged only by fits and starts. That line of the Valois was, then, incap- 
able of conducting the great war of creeds in France. But beside or con- 
fronting them were minds better equipped for good or for evil — Catharine 
de Medici, their mother, of unscrupulous character; the Guises, uncles of the 
queen of Scotland, Mary Stuart, who organized the Catholics into a party 
when they saw the Protestants forming a faction around the Bourbon 
princes, their rivals; Conde; Coligny, who at least connived at assassination 
and who bartered away French seaports for aid from England; in the 
Netherlands William the Silent, prince of Orange; and in England Eliza- 
beth, daughter of Henry VIII, who, during her sister Mary's reign, had been 
the hope of the English Protestants. In the war which these leaders were 
about to carry on there were to be varying interests; the Dutch would 
want liberty, England independence, the cities of France their ancient 
communal rights, and provincial feudalism its old privileges. But the 
religious form, which was that of the time, then covered everything, and, 
looking on the whole situation from the Vatican or the Escurial, one sees 



Second Period of the Wars of Religion 351 

that the higher object followed in western Europe during the second half 
of the sixteenth century was the triumph of the Church such as the Council 
of Trent had constituted it, and that of the king of Spain, its military leader. 

Beginning of the Wars of Religion. — ^The pledge taken at Cateau- 
Cambresis by the two kings had at once been faithfully acted upon and kept. 
In France Anne Dubourg went to the stake,and the edict of Ecouen threat- 
ened the Protestants with death. In Spain Philip II had an auto da fe held 
in his presence, so as to show his provincial governors that they must grant 
no pity to heretics; at Naples and in the Milanese all who could be found 
perished. Even the archbishop of Toledo was persecuted for his opinions; 
and bloody edicts carried terror to the Netherlands, where the creation 
of new Sees was to the population the announcement of a closer supervision. 
This declaration of war made on heresy was answered in 1559 by the English 
Parliament acknowledging Elizabeth as supreme head of the Anglican 
Church, and, in violation of the treaty of Augsburg, by the secularization 
of all the bishoprics in Brandenburg and the suppression of the religious 
and military order of the Knights Swordbearers of Livonia. Thus was the 
Reformation strengthened and extended from the Irish Sea to the end of 
the Baltic, in spite of the thunders of Rome and the threats of two power- 
ful kings. 

It tried even to win France by a plot, that of Amboise, which came near 
succeeding and which the Guises answered by making blood flow (1560). 
In vain did a great magistrate, L'Hopital, speak of moderation and tolerance 
to men who would listen only to their passions. The massacre of Vassy 
(1562) provoked though it was, inaugurated a war that ended only in 1598 
and during which France was the chief battlefield of the two parties. This 
characteristic was marked from the first hostilities. As soon as Philp II 
learned that the sword had been drawn, he sent to Montluc, the "Catholic 
butcher" in the south, three thousand of his best soldiers and turned others 
from the Netherlands upon Paris. At the same time the Protestants of 
Germany gave seven thousand men to Conde, to whom Elizabeth also 
furnished reinforcements and money. The defeat of this prince at Dreux 
and the assassination of the duke of Guise before Orleans, with Coligny's 
knowledge and consent, it is alleged, restored influence to the advocates of 
peace; to the Protestants Catharine de Medici granted the edict of Am- 
boise (1563), the chief provisions of which would be found again in the last 
edict of pacification, that of Nantes, a proof of the uselessness of these 
thirty-six years of murders, ravages and conflagrations. 

Catholicism Successful in the Netherlands and France.— The 



352 Second Period of the Wars of Religion 

peace of Amboise irritated Spain and Rome. Pius V, who had been Grand 
Inquisitor before being Pope, reproached Catharine for her weakness, and 
PhiHp II sent to meet her at Bayonne, during a journey she made to the south 
the most pitiless of his Heutenants, the duke of Alva, who planted in the 
queen's mind the germ of the St. Bartholomew massacre by teaching her 
his master's politics, which consisted in getting rid ofthe leaders by assassina- 
tion (1565). But the next phase ofthe struggle was to begin in the Nether- 
lands, whence it reached France. There had been as it were an invasion of 
Spaniards into those provinces, and to a people in which municipal life had 
always been so strong they brought the spirit of despotism. The publication 
of the decrees of the Council of Trent was a signal for insurrection. The 
nobles, threatened with the loss of their religious and political liberty, by 
the Breda Compromise (1566) pledged mutual aid in obtaining redress of 
their grievances; and the people, among whom the Reformation had already 
made great progress, especially in the northern provinces, with the blind 
violence of mobs rushed upon churches, broke the images ofthe saints, over- 
threw the altars, and burned the pulpits. Frightened at these demagogical 
excesses, the nobility held aloof, and violence, once isolated, soon abated. 
But Philip meant to make an example; to the Netherlands he sent the duke 
of Alva, who instituted the Bloody Tribunal. Eighteen thousand persons 
perished on the scaffold, among them the counts of Horn and Egmont; 
thirty thousand were despoiled of their property, w^hile one hundred thou- 
sand left the country, and a disastrous tax, the Alcavala, ruined the fortunes 
of those w^ho did not emigrate. 

The echo of these events resounded in France, where the Protestants, 
violating the edict of Amboise, started the second civil war (1567), marked 
by their defeat in the battle of Saint-Denis, and the third (1568), in which 
Italians paid by Pius V, Spaniards sent by the duke of Alva and Catholic 
Germans fought at Jarnac, where Conde met his death, and at Moncontour, 
where Coligny was defeated, against Protestants from every country. 
Victory remained with the Catholics; but in France it was an indecisive, 
victory, for Catharine wished to keep the two parties balanced against each 
other, and therefore gave liberal terms to the vanquished in the treaty of 
Saint-Germain (1570), in ordec, she said, to gain time to seek "something 
else. " In the Netherlands victory was complete, at least in appearance, and 
the southern provinces (modern Belgium) were for ever alienated from 
those ofthe north by the recent excesses ofthe Protestant rabble. Prepara- 
tions were begun for a descent upon England, where since 1563 gold had 
been spent to keep up agitation. In Spain there was implacable repression 
of every effort to assert political or religious liberty. The king's wrath 
appeared everywhere. In 1568 he drove his son to suicide, his wife to 



Second Period of the Wars of Religion 353 

death, and the Moriscos of the Alpijarras to revolt; he estabhshed the 
Inquisition in the Spanish colonies, and, from one end of his monarchy to 
the other, silence and terror reigned. In that period Catholicism met with 
only one serious check — the mistakes and fall of Mary Stuart (1568) 
assured victory to the Reformers in Scotland. 

Spain's Scattered Strength — Lepanto. — But the forces of Spain v\^ere 
scattered in all directions. Much money was spent, many soldiers were 
employed — in Andalusia against the Moors, who, supported by England, 
resisted until 1571; on the Mediterranean against the Turks, who continued 
to advance and conquered Cyprus in 1570; in the Netherlands, against the 
Gueux (Ragamuffins), who, along the coasts and at the mouths of the rivers, 
stopped the Spanish ships and, by preventing revictualing, made some 
uneasy and others hopeful; in Naples, Milan, and on the African coast, 
where the Spaniards had to defend their Presidios against the Moroccans; 
in the colonies, in Mexico, in Peru, where large garrisons were necessary. 
Spain was exhausting itself of men to master the world. 

The war against the Turks, the only one really honorable, was ruinous. 
In 1558 a squadron and an army sent against Tlemcen perished; the follow-, 
ing year fifteen thousand soldiers mounted on two hundred vessels wished to 
seize Tripoli and met with frightful disaster; four years later it was the 
Naples fleet that was destroyed by a storm, and in 1565 Soliman, who had 
already taken Rhodes from the Knights of St. John, besieged them in Malta, 
which the Grand Master, La Valette, succeeded in saving. These efforts of 
the Turks to make themselves masters of the whole Mediterranean obliged 
Philip II to turn a large part of his resources in that direction. After the 
loss of Cyprus, he collected three hundred ships carrying eighty thousand 
soldiers and rowers, and his illegitimate brother, Don John of Austria, won 
the famous victory of Lepanto (1571). "When vv^e take a kingdom from 
you" said Selim to the Venetian ambassador, "we cut off one of your arms; 
when you scatter our fleet, you shave off our beard, but that does not keep it 
from growing again;" and, in fact, he very soon afterwards had another 
fleet of two hundred and fifty vessels. 

Events in England — The St. Bartholomew Massacre. — These out- 
lays of men and money left to Philip for the affairs of France and England 
only the resource of conspiracies. The victory of Lepanto encouraged them, 
and the duke of Norfolk tried to overthrow Elizabeth in favor of Mary 
Stuart, while Catharine de Medici sought to get rid of Coligny by assassina- 
tion, and, this failing, precipitated the St. Bartholomew massacre. When 
the murder of Darnley, husband of Mary Stuart, by the earl of Bothwell 



354 Second Period of the Wars of Religion 

(1567) and the queen's marriage with the assassin had raised the whole of 
Scotland against her, Mary fled to Elizabeth, who held her in captivity 
against all right (1568). Almost immediately the expiration of the injustice 
began, and England did not cease to be agitated by plots of the Catholics 
to free the prisoner. Philip II pensioned the English refugees on the 
continent, and to their priests he opened the seminaries of Flanders, so as 
to keep the British coast under the constant threat of an invasion more 
formidable than that of an army of soldiers. In 1569 the Pope excom- 
municated Elizabeth, and several noblemen collected a small army that 
carried on its banner a picture of Christ with the five bleeding wounds. 
The following year there was a fresh revolt which, like the former, was de- 
tected, and a third attempt, in 1572, by the duke of Norfolk, to whom 
Mary Stuart had promised her hand, and who perished on the scaffold. 

In England Protestantism defended itself, while in France one might 
believe it was about to perish. Since the peace of Saint-Germain Coligny 
had won great influence over the min^d of the young king, Charles IX. He 
wished to lead the Protestants to the conquest of the Spanish Netherlands 
in order that, by the same blow, he might end the civil wars in France and 
begin a national war. The carrying out of this great plan was in prepara- 
tion when a professional assassin wounded the admiral and the king was 
hurriedly prevailed upon to let the work be completed. Thus came about 
the abominable massacre of St. Bartholomew's day (August 24, 1572). 
The king represented to the Pope that he had just escaped falling a victim to 
a Protestant conspiracy, and the Pope congratulated him on his deliverance 
from it. Of a different tenor was the message received from the king of 
Spain. ''Rest assured^" said Philip II, "that by doing God's work, you 
will also do your own the better. " Such is the expression of that policy, 
at one and the same time atrocious and odious, which threw a mask of piety, 
over his whole earthly ambition. 

Protestant Progress in France and the Netherlands. — Protes- 
tantism, mutilated and bleeding, arose stronger than ever. In spite of the 
loss of its most valiant captains and the pick of its soldiers, the Calvinist 
party rushed to arms after the St. Bartholomew holocaust, and, by the 
treaty of La Rochelle, obtained liberty of conscience. That political crime 
of August 24 had, then, as always happens, been of no avail. When Henry 
III, of a clear mind but a perverse heart, succeeded Charles IX (1574), he 
found himself face to face with three parties that he was incapable of master- 
ing, the Politics, led by his youngest brother, Francis of Alen^on, the Cal- 
vinists, who acknowledged the head of the house of Bourbon, Henry of 
Beam, king of Navarre, as their leader, and the extreme Catholics, whom 



Second Period of the Wars of Religion 355 

Henry of Guise organized under the name of the League (1576), aimed as 
much against the king as against the Huguenots. Unimportant wars and 
treaties bring us to the year 1584, when the duke of Alen^on died. As 
Henry HI had no son, it was the leader of the Protestants who became the 
heir presumptive to the crown. In the war of the three Henrys he showed 
himself worthy of his rights by the brilliant victory of Coutras (1587), so 
that then one might believe the wars of religion in France were about to 
place a heretic on the throne of St. Louis, in spite of the excommunication 
by the Pope, who declared Henry of Navarre unworthy of succeeding to the 
crown. 

In the Netherlands there was like success. After having for a long 
time carried on a pirates' war that brought no definite result, the Gueux 
undertook war on land that might begin something. In 1572 they seized 
Briel, and immediately the provinces of Holland and Zeeland took up arms. 
Supported by Protestants from Germany, England and France, well served 
by the nature of their canal-intersected country, and especially commanded 
by William of Nassau, prince of Orange, who vvas surnamed the Silent in 
spite of his eloquence, and who, like his father-in-law, Coligny, knew how to 
derive advantage even from reverses, the insurgents defended themselves 
successfully. Violence having failed, Philip wished to try gentleness, and 
recalled Alva. But the army, left without pay and provisions, sacked the 
chief cities, and the common irritation brought about the Confederation of 
Ghent (1576), which for a moment united all the Netherlands against 
Spanish rule. But, owing to the conduct of some of the Protestants leading 
to fear that the outrages of a decade earlier might be repeated, union could 
not last long between the ten Walloon provinces (Belgium), which were 
manufacturing and Catholic, and the Batavian provinces (Netherlands or 
Holland), which were commercial and now mostly Calvinist. Opposition 
of interests and creeds was to lead to opposition of political views. In 
1579, in fact, the Walloons, by the treaty of Maestricht, acknowledged 
Philip II as king. On the other hand, the northern provinces strengthened 
their union at Utrecht, and set themselves up as a republic, with William 
of Orange as Stathouder or governor-general. Two years later the States 
General of The Hague, the federal capital of the United Provinces, solemnly 
separated from the crown of Spain and declared Philip II forfeit of all 
authority in the Netherlands. 

The Netherlands, Spain and England.— The king had set a price on 
the Silent's head. A ruffian wished to win the prize, and he slew the 
Stathouder (1584); but already the liberty of the United Provinces no 
longer depended on the life of one man. The Hollanders knew how to 



356 Second Period of the Wars of Religion 

defend their independence even against the duke of Parma, the able Farnese, 
aided as they were by England, which sent them (1565) six thousand men, 
and by France, whither the duke was obliged to go twice to the aid of the 
League, the last time to die there. Thus in the Netherlands the war under- 
taken by the Catholics had as a result the bringing of a new people into the 
family of nations. 

England and Spain had not yet come to open hostilities. Elizabeth, 
however, had been sending arms, soldiers and money to all of Philip IPs 
enemies, and with bold corsairs was waging a disastrous war on Spanish 
commerce. In 1577 Drake pillaged all the cities on the coast of Chile and 
Peru, captured a considerable number of ships, and, after having sailed 
around the globe, returned in three years with an immense amount of booty. 
Cavendish, in 1585, for the second time devastated the Spanish settlements, 
while the Dutch laid waste those of Portugal, a Spanish province since 1580; 
and the king could not be avenged, as his two enemies had not yet either marts 
or commerce and as, outside of their own territory, there were no vulnerable 
points at which they could be injured. Against Elizabeth he was there- 
fore reduced to the sorry expedient of conspiracies, which were made easy 
by the cruel condition to which the queen had reduced the English Catholics. 
In one year two hundred persons were beheaded, for the Protestants did 
not practise toleration any more than did their adversaries, and on both 
sides Heaven was defended with tortures and assassinations. A last 
effort to kill the queen of England led her to send Mary Stuart to the 
scaffold (1587), and with the head of the Guises' niece fell all the hopes 
of a Catholic restoration in Great Britain. 

Spain Worsted — Henry IV, King of France. — ^The extreme Catholic 
party, worsted in the Netherlands and in England and menaced in France, 
resolved to make a supreme effort. In 1584 the Guises had negotiated 
with Philip II and revived the League. He exhausted all the resources of 
his States to organize a fleet and an army capable of bringing back the 
Netherlands and England, and then France, to the Catholic faith and the law 
of Spain. On June 3, 1588, the Invincible Armada left the Tagus, intending 
to land in England an army of fifty thousand men. Storm and the English 
and Dutch seamen with their fire-ships gained the upper hand over this 
work of pride. The project on which Philip II had toiled and reflected for 
eighteen years came to naught in a few days. 

Just when Philip II thought that his Armada would bring him victorious 
to London, Guise, his best ally, was entering Paris in triumph (Day of the 
Barricades, May, 1588), from which the king escaped as a fugitive. But, 
the Spanish fleet having been destroyed, Henry began to hope again. He 



Second Period of the Wars of Religion 357 

enticed his rival to Blois, where he had him murdered. Then, uniting with 
the heretical king of Navarre, he returned to lay siege to his capital. There 
he was assassinated in his camp (1589). Th^ head of the house of Bourbon 
was at once proclaimed king of France under the name of Henry IV. If 
many Catholics abandoned him, there came to him seven thousand English- 
men, two thousand Hollanders, and fifteen thousand Germans, who enabled 
him to hold out against the Spaniards and the Italians who had come to the 
aid of the League. The battles of Arques and Ivry consolidated his fortunes 
and renown (1590). Twice did Farnese come to wrest Paris and Rouen 
from him (159 1). But the demagogical excesses of the Sixteen, and the 
general weariness and imprudence of Philip II, who asked the States 
General of 1593 to give the crown of France to his daughter Isabella through 
her prospective husband, an Austrian archduke, rallied the Politics to 
Henry IV, and in a short time all good citizens, especially after he had 
embraced the Catholic faith at Saint-Denis (1593), accepted him as ruler. 
The League disbanded, feeling it had accomplished its mission by giving a 
Catholic king to France. Paris was turned over to him, its Spanish garrison 
was dismissed (1594), and, a few months later, he was absolved by the Pope. 
A brief war with Spain, marked by one petty battle and the siege of Amiens, 
was ended by the treaty of Vervins (1598), which restored the boundaries 
of the two kingdoms on the footing of the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis. 
Three weeks earlier Henry IV had secured internal peace by signing the 
edict of Nantes, which gave to the Protestants liberty of conscience every- 
where, and liberty of worship within the castles and in a large number of 
cities; evenly divided chambers in the parliaments of the south; places of 
safety, and, lastly, which made them as it w^ere a State within a State, the 
right of assembling by deputies every three years for the purpose of present- 
ing their claims to the government. 

Decline and Ruin of Spain. — ^There is no greater moral lesson in 
history than that which is given us by the reign of Philip II, of that man 
who, so as to master wills and consciences, placed at the service of his 
ambition resources apparently inexhaustible and an energy receding from 
no obstacle, inasmuch as everything seemed lawful to that mind disturbed 
by both political and religious fanaticism. His career is paralleled only 
by those of Richelieu and Louis XIV, whose unscrupulous, domineering and 
wasteful policies were the most potent cause of the downfall of old France 
and the horrors of the Revolution. But, worst of all, in trying to work out 
his ambition Philip II compromised the Church, for he wanted the restora- 
tion of Catholicism to serve only as an instrument for strengthening Spanish 
domination. And when, in order to attain his end, he had shed oceans of 



358 Second Period of the Wars of Religion 

blood, he found that what he had destroyed was neither heresy nor the liberty 
of the peoples, but Spain. Everything was perishing there. Commerce and 
industry, so seriously affected by the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors, 
were still more so by the monopolies which the government created. Agri- 
culture succumbed to the periodic ravages of the Mesta's bands; the popu- 
lation, decimated by war and emigration, was so likewise by the miseries of 
the times driving so many men and women into the cloister and the ecclesias- 
tical state — there were nearly a million men in Spain leading the religious 
life. From all these causes labor diminished, and the country was com- 
pelled to purchase abroad what it no longer knew how to produce. Amer- 
ica's gold, then, passed through Spain without enriching it, and flowed 
rapidly towards the producing peoples. In this way is explained the fact, 
which surprised so many contemporaries, that the owner of the richest 
metallic deposits in the world was twice (in 1575 and 1596) obliged to 
suspend payment, and that he left behind him an enormous debt. Men 
did not yet know that real wealth is not the gold that represents it, but the 
labor that creates it. Philip II died in 1598, four months after the edict of 
Nantes was issued and the treaty of Vervins concluded, that is, after having 
seen the crumbling of all his plans and the strengthening of his two great 
adversaries, Henry IV and Elizabeth. A century later the Marquis de 
Torcy said: "Spain is a body without a soul;" and we have seen that Italy 
shared the fate of Spain. 

Prosperity of England and Holland. — ^The perils from which 
England had escaped, internal conspiracies and foreign war, had enabled 
Elizabeth to complete the work of the Tudors, by making English royalty 
the most absolute ever known. As head of the Church, she cruelly perse- 
cuted the Nonconformists as well as the Catholics, and, so as the better to 
reach their adversaries, the Anglicans surrendered the public liberties to her. 
Jury trial w^as almost suppressed; in the Parliament no voice dared to make 
itself heard against the ministers, and in trials for high treason, which were 
instituted on the slightest pretext, the courts of justice differed little from 
veritable assassins' dens. That was what the war of the Two Roses, the 
Reformation and religious antipathies had done for free England. Under 
that despotism a revolution was being hatched that was to find its full devel- 
opment under Elizabeth's second successor. But at least she had developed 
for her country all the sources of wealth by favoring seamanship and com- 
merce, the creating of the London exchange, the colonization of Virginia, 
from which the potato and tobacco were introduced, the migration of the 
Flemings to England fleeing from Spanish tyranny and endowing their 
adopted country with their industrial and commercial skill. Under Eliza- 



Second Period of the Wars of Religion 359 

beth lived one of the world's greatest dramatic poets, Shakespeare, and a 
philosopher, Bacon, who brought about a revolution in the sciences by 
making the experimental method at last prevail. 

The Dutch, while defending their half-inundated land against Philip 
II, had already become ploughers of the ocean and harvesters of the seas. 
They exchanged their barrels of herrings for kegs of gold, by purveying 
salt fish to the Catholic countries, in which the practice of abstinence 
from flesh meat made such a commodity a necessity. In a single year the 
fishermen turned five million florins into the treasury as their share of 
the taxes. Besides, they carried on a commission business, purchasing 
merchandise where it was cheap and carrying it to where it commanded good 
prices. When Philip II closed Lisbon against them, they went in search of 
the products of the Orient to where they were produced, and, by the conquest 
of the Moluccas, laid the foundations of a new colonial empire, which the 
Great Indies Company, organized in 1602, developed and strengthened. 
Two provinces, Holland and Zeeland, had of themselves alone seventy 
thousand sailors, through whose hands passed all the commerce of Spain and 
Portugal. 

Preliminaries to the Thirty Years* War. — When Charles V, with 
all his hopes disappointed, resolved to abdicate, he had previously promul- 
gated the peace of Augsburg, which could be but a truce, because the 
Ecclesiastical Reservation which it stipulated forbade the holders of bene- 
fices who might afterwards pass over to Protestantism to retain the property 
whose temporary administration the Church had given to them. Besides, 
Lutheranism had split up into a multitude of sects holding different views 
on the question of grace. The universities of Jena, Wittenberg and Leipzig 
excommunicated one another, and, amid that anarchy, a temporal sovereign, 
the duke of Saxony, arrogated to himself to dictate a formulary and to 
exile or imprison those opposing it. In 1580 the Reformers of Saxony and 
Brandenburg signed a formula of harmony to which three Electors and a 
large number of princes and cities gave their adhesion, but which the other 
States of northern Germany rejected. Besides, separation was ever as 
pronounced between the Lutherans and the Calvinists, even so much so 
that the former- let the Catholics depose from his Electorate Gebhard von 
Truchsess, archbishop of Cologne, who had gone over to Calvinism (1583)- 
If the treaty of Augsburg was in this case maintained, it had been violated 
in regard to many other benefices, giving the Catholics just ground for 
complaint. But the dissensions among the Protestants enabled the Catho- 
lics to recover a great deal of influence, especially owing to the efficient ser- 
vices of the Jesuits, who, from Bavaria, their headquarters in Germany, 



360 Second Period of the Wars of Religion 

extended their influence afar, had the Protestants driven from Aix-la- 
Chapelle (Aachen), the repubhc of Donauwerth degraded from its rank as 
an imperial city, and a Reformer prevented from occupying the bishoprick 
of Strasburg. Thus was the plan of a Catholic restoration being carried 
out in Germany. Then the Protestants, becoming uneasy, began to com- 
promise their own differences and formed the Evangelical Union (1608), 
against which their adversaries set up the Catholic League, whose guidance 
Austria, then under weak princes, turned over to Maximilian, duke of 
Bavaria. 

The succession to Cleves, Berg and Jiilich (1609) came near starting 
a European conflagration. Two Protestant heirs presented themselves, the 
duke of Neuburg and the Elector of Brandenburg. When the emperor 
sequestrated the duchies the Protestants protested, and Henry IV of France 
was preparing to go to their aid when Ravaillac assassinated him (1610). 
Thus was the folly of Francis I in wishing to crush the house of Austria left 
to be continued by Richelieu and Louis XIV. The dispute about the duchies 
went on. Neuburg became a Catholic and Brandenburg a Calvinist; the 
Spaniards entered the contested territory from one side and the Dutch from 
another. Just then Austria changed its policy with the accession of Ferdi- 
nand II. 

The Thirty Years' War — Palatine and Danish Periods .^The 

Bohemians, for the most part Protestants, after having elected Ferdinand as 
their king, deposed him because he wanted them to withdraw from some 
encroachments they had made upon the Catholics, and chose in his stead the 
Elector Palatine, Frederick, son-in-law of James I, king of England (1618). 
There was a general uprising of the Czeks (Slavic Bohemians), as in the time 
of Ziska. Thus was begun the last great religious war in Europe, just one 
century after the outbreak of the Reformation. But the later was a war of 
religion only in its earlier stages, it was much more of a political struggle, and 
is especially marked by the revival of France's old jealousy of Austria. 
Frederick was a Calvinist, and was a weak man leading a weak cause; 
therefore the Lutherans, and even his own father-in-law, abandoned him, 
while the Spaniards made common cause with the Austrians and their allies. 
The Bohemians were at first successful, and even laid siege to Vienna, from 
which the Bavarians forced them to withdraw. Two years after the begin- 
ning of hostilities they were totally defeated in the battle of the White Moun- 
tain by the League's forces, and Ferdinand II won back Bohemia. As 
Frederick refused to abandon his revolutionary claim, the Palatinate was 
invaded and devastated, he was outlawed and deprived of his hereditary 
domains. But his two chief lieutenants, stronger though more disreputable 




NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 

The humble Corsican who rose to be General in the French Army, Consul 
for ten years, Consul for life, and, finally, Emperor of France in 1804, is one 
of the most conspicuous characters in the history of the world. He proved 
himself to be not only a great conqueror in war, but a great ruler in peace, but 
too eager for military glory. He died a prisoner on the Island of St. Helena. 



Second Period of the Wars of Religion 361 

than himself, the count of Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick, for some 
time kept in check the Belgian general, Tilly, in command of the Bavarians, 
and the Spaniards coming to his aid from the Netherlands. 

Their tenacity gave the Protestant princes time to organize so as to 
keep Ferdinand from becoming master of the whole of Germany. Appeal 
was made to the northern kings, whom the defeat of the German Reformers 
would expose to attack by the Catholic princes of the south. Christian IV, 
king of Denmark, was the first to enter the field under the new arrangement 
(1625). He occupied the country between the Elbe and the Weser; but, 
while he was there arresting the progress of the League's forces, a Bohemian 
nobleman, a veteran of the preceding wars who had recently acquired im- 
mense wealth by his wife's death, Prince Waldstein (Wallenstein), offered to 
raise fifty thousand, and then one hundred thousand, men for the emperor, 
who had no army. Having no object in view but self-interest and aggrand- 
izement, he reserved to himself absolute command over his soldiers, whom 
he proposed to support by billeting and pillage. Beaten by Tilly at Lutter 
and threatened with being cut off from Holstein by Wallenstein, the Dane 
returned to his peninsula and signed the treaty of Liibeck (1629). Then 
northern Germany, with its princes reduced to poverty by an imperial 
Edict of Restitution to the Church and occupied by one hundred thousand 
imperialists, bowed to Austrian power. Wallenstein boasted that there 
was no further need of Electors or princes in Germany, that everything there 
was to be subject to a single king as in France and Spain. France did not 
want such a condition and helped the Protestants with its money, while at 
the same time it had been crushing the Protestants at home. Later on it 
was to send its armies to almost annihilate Austria, and at the same time to 
lay the foundations of a new power, Prussia, that was one day to crush 
France. Richelieu sent secret emissaries to revive the jealousy and courage 
of the German princes. At a diet held at Ratisbon he prevailed upon these 
princes to demand the dismissal of Wallenstein, who was exhausting Ger- 
many with requisitions, and to refuse the title of king of the Romans to the 
son of Ferdinand H. At the same time he induced the kings of Poland and 
Sweden to conclude a peace treaty, so that the latter, the subsequently 
famous Gustavus Adolphus, would be free to come to the Reformers' aid. 

Thirty Years' War — Swedish and French Periods.— This great 
general, who became alarmed at seeing the Austrians and Catholicism win a 
foothold on the shores of the Baltic, landed in Pomerania (1630) with six- 
teen thousand admirably disciplined men. France could not yet enter the 
field to help him; but at least it promised him an annual subsidy of four 
hundred thousand crowns. Having conquered Pomerania, he penetrated 



362 Second Period of the Wars of Religion 

into Saxony, defeated Tilly at Leipzig (163 1), and drove all the Spanish and 
other Catholic garrisons from Franconia, Suabia, the upper Rhine and the 
Palatinate, while the Elector of Saxony invaded Lausitz and Bohemia. 
Having thus separated the imperialists and the Spaniards, he entered 
Bavaria and forced the passage of the Lech, where Tilly was slain. But the 
emperor appealed to Wallenstein, who rapidly organized a fresh army and 
threw himself on Saxony, which he thus obliged Gustavus to come and 
defend. At Lutzen the king of Sweden won his last victory and died at the 
moment of his triumph (1632). Able generals, his pupils, took his place, 
and Ferdinand facilitated their task by causing the assassination of Wallen- 
stein, whose ambition was alarming him and whose treason would probably 
soon have ruined him (1634). But this very year the defeat of Bernard of 
Saxe Weimar at Nordlingen robbed Sweden of all its allies in Germany 
except the landgrave of Hesse Cassel, and Richelieu thought it necessary 
at last to set the armies of France in motion. 

The French made an unsuccessful beginning. The Spaniards crossed 
the Somme and seized Corbie. The court and Paris were momentarily 
frightened; but Richelieu warded off the danger, recovered Corbie, and 
threatened his generals with death unless they were victorious. Arras was 
captured (1640); Bernard of Saxe Weimar, purchased by Richelieu, had 
conquered Alsace, and when dying (1639) left his army and his conquest to 
France. D'Harcourt won three victories in Piedmont, then an ally of the 
Spaniards; the king himself went and took Perpignan, which has remained 
French ever since, and Richelieu encouraged revolt in Catalonia and 
Portugal, which recovered its independence (1640). While the French were 
winning these successes in the west, the Swedish generals. Banner and 
Torstenson were victorious in Brandenburg, Silesia and Saxony. Gue- 
briant, victorious at Wolfenbuttel and Kempen (1641-2), was about to 
join hands with the Swedes and the united forces fall on exhausted Austria, 
when Richelieu died (1643). This death emboldened the Spaniards, who 
invaded France. Conde defeated them at Rocroi (1643), and, victorious 
again at Freiburg (1644), at Nordlingen (1645), ^"^ lastly at Lens 1648), 
he brought about the peace for which all were longing. 

The Treaties of Westphalia. — Negotiations for peace had been begun 
in 1641, but were opened seriously only three years later, in two Westphalian 
cities, at Osnabriick between the Protestants and the emperor, and at Mini- 
ster between the plenipotentiaries of the Catholic princes. At the last 
moment Spain withdrew, hoping to take advantage of the Fronde troubles 
that had broken out in France, so as to recover Cerdagne, Roussillon and 
Artois, which it had lost. The other States signed the treaty on October 24, 
1648. 



Second Period of the Wars of Religion 363 

Austria was the chief loser. The princes secured full liberty for them- 
selves, but their subjects had it only with many restrictions, because in 
each State there was a dominant religion, Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist. 
These three denominations, the only ones recognized, obtained equality of 
rights. As for the possession of ecclesiastical property and the practice of 
worship, everything was brought back to the condition of Germany in 1624, 
except in the Palatinate, whose "normal year" was 1618. Thus, territorial 
acquisitions and secularizations brought about since the peace of Augsburg 
(1555) were recognized, and, so as to give indemnities to the Protestant 
princes, many bishoprics and abbeys were secularized. It was a cardinal, 
Richelieu, a Frenchman first and afterwards a Churchman, who had pre- 
pared the way for this treaty; and it was another cardinal of like character, 
Mazarin, who had signed it. The secularization of politics was completed, 
and temporal interests thereafter depended only on themselves. 

How the Participants Fared. — ^While Wallenstein was weighting 
Germany with his immense army and Ferdinand II was distributing these 
spoils of the princes to his relatives, one might be led to believe that the 
dream of Otho the Great, Frederick Barbarossa and Charles V was about 
to be realized, unity of the empire under the emperor's absolute authority. 
France and the Swedes destroyed this hope. On the questions of alliance, 
war, treaty and new law, the right of suffrage in the diet was guaranteed to 
all the German princes and States, They were confirmed in the full 
exercise of sovereignty over their own territory; and they had the right to 
enter into alliance with foreign powers, provided, said a vain restriction, 
it was not against either the emperor or the empire. The imperial authority 
had, then, become merely a title, and Germany now formed not a State, but 
a confederation. For a long time past, Switzerland and Holland had been 
strangers to the empire; and this de facto separation received the sanction 
of law. 

The victors were lacking in moderation. Sweden insisted on obtaining 
domains that gave it the estuaries of the three great rivers of Germany, 
the Oder, the Elbe and the Weser (Bremen and Verden), useless possessions 
because it could not keep them long, and dangerous because they would 
tempt it to meddle in the continental wars, in which it would lose more than 
it had gained. France kept Pignerol in Piedmont, that is, a gate opening 
into Italy; Alsace, a valuable acquisition, and, beyond the Rhine, Alt 
Breisach and Philippsburg, which it had the right to garrison; moreover, 
by conferring on the German States the right to contract alliances with 
foreign powers, it had the means of purchasing some of those needy princes. 
The French, then, had in the west, like the Swedes in the north, an offensive 



364 Second Period of the Wars of Religion 

position, and Germany, divided into four or five hundred States, Lutheran, 
Calvinist and Catholic monarchical and republican, lay and ecclesiastical, 
would necessarily become the theatre of every intrigue, the battle ground 
of Europe, as Italy had been in the beginning of modern times, and for the 
same reasons — divisions and anarchy, which were soon to tempt France, the 
chief agent in producing this condition, to an ambition that, along with the 
absolutism of its government, was to entail, first the impoverishment of its 
people, and then the ruin of its monarchy. 



CHAPTER XXIII 



The Age of Louis XIV 



The France of Richelieu. — The first king of the Bourbon dynasty 
was also the last of his race to effect any real internal improvement in 
France. Aided by his great minister, the duke of Sully, he restored order 
and financial credit. But his weak widow, Mary de Medici, as regent dur- 
ing minority of their son, Louis XIII, came near undoing his work. She 
turned over the treasury to her Italian favorite. Marshal d'Ancre (Concini), 
and to nobles hankering after the restoration of feudalism, who revolted so 
as to make her purchase their submission with places and pensions; and, in 
order to cover their cupidity with a semblance of public interest, they de- 
manded the convening of the States General (1614), their last meeting be- 
fore the Revolution. The proceedings developed violent antagonism be- 
tween the nobility and the gentry and, in Church matters, between the 
Gallican and the Roman party. Two years later there was a fresh revolt 
of the nobles, ever with the same object, and the king conspired with them 
against his own mother (161 7). Then attaining his majority, he began to 
rule with the aid of the duke of Luynes, but they did no better. The nobles 
turned about, supported their former adversary, the queen dowager, and 
twice took up arms to overthrow the new favorite. A more serious war 
broke out in 1621. The southern Protestants, irritated at being ordered 
to restore the property they had taken from the Catholics, rebelled and 
dreamt of founding a French Holland with La Rochelle as its Amsterdam. 
The next year a treaty confirmed the edict of Nantes and granted them 
two new cities of refuge, but forbade them to hold any political meeting 
without royal authority. 

In 1624 Mary's fortunes revived, and she made her chaplain, Richelieu, 
her chief adviser. In home affairs he undertook to destroy the power of 
the nobility and the independence of the Protestants, and in foreign mat- 
ters the ascendancy of the house of Austria. Like Louis XI, he began by 
trying to do too much at once, but soon changed his plan and attacked his 
various enemies in succession. Making peace for the time being with the 
Protestants and Spain, he played havoc with the nobles (1726-7); those of 

365 



366 The Age of Louis XIV 

them he had not put to death he deposed from their exalted offices. Then he 
undertook to deal with the Protestants, who were supported by England, 
though he had taken pains to marry his king's sister to the new king of that 
realm. La Rochelle was besieged, the English fleet kept from relieving it, 
and, after a most heroic resistance, during which its population was reduced 
from thirty to five thousand inhabitants, the capital of French Protestant- 
ism opened its gates (1628). The treaty of Alais left to the Calvinists 
their civil guarantees and religious Uberty, but made them dismantle their 
fortified places and cease holding poHtical assembUes. Thus they ceased 
to form a State within a State, and the political unity of France was es- 
tabhshed for good. But until the end of his Hfe RicheHeu had plots of 
the nobihty to suppress. Immediately after the fall of La Rochelle the 
nobles surrounded the king with a cabal directed by his mother, but the 
wily and bold minister circumvented them and sent her into exile at Bruss- 
els (1631). After the king's mother it was his brother, Gaston of Orleans, 
who stirred up revolt, but only made other victims for the scaffold (1632). 
Another civil war came to a similar end in 1641; and a last conspiracy, that 
of Cinq-Mars, might have succeeded had he not ruined himself by signing a 
treaty with Spain (1642). In the following year the great minister died. 
At home he had removed all the obstacles in the way of royal authority, 
leveled the feudal fortresses, and (1635) reduced the hitherto excessive 
authority of the provincial governors. Abroad, as we have seen, his policy 
in the Thirty Years' War had been eminently successful. 

Troubles Arising under Mazarin. — Louis XIII did not long survive 
the great cardinal-statesman, and France once more had to endure a minor- 
ity, for Louis XIV was only five years old. His mother, Anne of Austria, 
had the parliament appoint her regent, which office the late king had be- 
queathed to a council. She chose as her adviser a shrewd and cunning Ital- 
ian, Mazarin, who was persistent rather than great. Sent as nuncio to 
France, he won the favor of Richelieu, who had him appointed cardinal. A 
reaction against Richelieu's severe government broke out immediately. 
Pensions, honors and privileges were lavished by the "good" queen, with- 
out holding in check the great barons, some of whom formed the Cabal of 
the Somebodies. The regent, or rather Mazarin, saw the danger in time 
and the leaders were either imprisoned or banished. There was extreme 
disorder in the finances, and Mazarin did not or could not apply the neces- 
sary remedies. In order to get money, two unpopular edicts were issued, 
and, as the parhament had given authority to levy for only two years, 
Mazarin asked the sovereign courts to extend their pledges to four years. 
This time the parhament objected, and assumed to play the part which the 



The Age of Louis XIV 367 

English Parliament had just acted, that of reformer of the State. For 
royal sanction it proposed twenty-seven articles, declaring that the imposts 
would be collected only after having been verified and registered, abohshed 
the provincial overseers, and forbade any subject of the king being kept 
under arrest more than twenty-four hours without having his case heard. 
Just then Conde won the battle of Lens. Mazarin, emboldened by this 
great victory, had three councillors seized during a "Te Deum" (1648). 
The people rose up immediately, two hundred barricades were erected, and 
the court, in order to gain time, sanctioned the parliament's demands. 
At that moment the treaties of WestphaHa were being signed. 

War of the Fronde — Treaty of the Pyrenees. — Peace having been 
concluded with Austria, the regent called Conde to her. Immediately the 
Frondeurs (catapulters), the name given to the parliament party swollen by 
the intriguing and greedy nobility, raised troops with money furnished by 
the sovereign courts. The soul of the movement was Paul de Gondi, coad- 
jutor and then archbishop of Paris, later on known as Cardinal de Retz, who 
boasted he had studied the art of conspiracies in Sallust and Plutarch, and 
who had himself written the "Conjuration de Fiesque." He flattered him- 
self he could compel the court to give him RicheHeu's place by organizing a 
party among the people, as if the people had already a part to play. He ha- 
rangued and adroitly used the duke of Beaufort, a grandson of Henry IV, 
who was very popular in spite of his being a ninny, who was called the King 
of the Market, and who could not be anything else. After a brief war, in 
which the Parisians were constantly beaten, peace was signed at Ruel (1649). 

But Conde, by his haughty airs, made himself unendurable to the queen 
and Mazarin, and the latter had him arrested, along with the leaders of the 
Petits Maitres (fops) faction. The provincial nobility took up arms in fa- 
vor of the princes^ and Turenne, drawn into the rebeUion by his passion 
for the duchess of Longueville, was defeated at Rethel by the royal troops. 
Mazarin was triumphing, then, when the coadjutor, irritated at not having 
obtained the cardinal's hat that had been promised to him, renewed the war 
of the Fronde. Mazarin was obliged to flee to Liege (1651). Fortunately 
Turenne returned to the king's party, which he saved by his skill at Bleneau 
and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine (1652). Conde was compelled to seek 
refuge in Flanders and put himself at the service of the Spainards; the 
Fronde came to an end (1653). Two years later, when the padiament 
showed a disposition to oppose the registering of certain edicts, the 
young king, returning from hunting, in his boots and with whip in hand, 
went and forbade that body to continue its deliberations. 

Peace having been restored within the realm, the foreign war was ener- 



368 The Age of Louis XIV 

getically pushed. Turenne forced the Spanish Hnes at Arras (1654), then 
won the victory of the Dunes, and opened the way to the Netherlands 
(1658). Some months later Mazarin signed the treaty of the Pyrenees 
(1659), by which Spain ceded back Roussillon, Cerdagne and Artois, and 
gave the Infanta Maria Teresa in marriage to Louis XIV, who renounced 
all pretension to the crown of Spain; but Mazarin saw to it that this renun- 
ciation was null. In the previous year he had concluded with several 
German princes the League of the Rhine, which Napoleon was to renew a 
century and a half later, with no more advantage to France. Mazarin died 
in 1 66 1. His administration had not been great, but had been able, and his 
financial management, disastrous to the treasury, had not been so to himself 
and his relatives; but he left royalty free from every shackle and France, 
glorified by policy and arms, nay, even by literature and art, for Corneille, 
Descartes, Pascal and Poussin had long before inaugurated what has been 
called the Age of Louis XIV. 

England* s Struggle for Political Liberty. — ^While France was reach- 
ing the period that was externally the most brilliant of its old monarchy, the 
two victims of the wars of religion, Spain and Austria, were dressing their 
wounds, the one sluggishly, because it spent thirty-five years under a mori- 
bund king, the other with the activity which the neighborhood of the Turks 
and the turbulence of Hungary imposed upon it, but without brilliancy or 
greatness, because of the mediocrity of its princes. In eastern and northern 
Europe manifold ambitions were in agitation — Swedes against Danes, 
Russians against Poles; then the Elector of Brandenburg seeking to 
strengthen his hand amid these competitions, and the Turks from time to 
time disarranging them by a formidable invasion, the last threat of an 
exhausted and dying strength. Attention, then, was not as yet seriously 
turned in that direction; it remained fixed on western Europe,' where all 
eyes were already watching Louis XIV. Spain and the empire would be 
powerless to keep him in check; was such to be the case with England.? 
Let us see, then, what had been happening in that country during the Thirty 
Years' War, and we will find that with the humiliation of the house of 
Austria in both its branches, Spain and the empire, corresponds the decline 
of Great Britain condemned to a war of words and then of blood between 
king and Parliament. 

James VI of Scotland, son of Mary Stuart and great-great-grandson of 
Henry VII of England, had succeeded Elizabeth in 1603, and united the two 
crowns on his head without yet blending the two States into one. He aban- 
doned the Protestant policy which, in the late reign, had made Endand 
influential; he refused to cooperate in Henry IV's projects, sought alliance 



The Age of Louis XIV 369 

with Spain, and remained almost indifferent to the ruin of his misguided 
son-in-law, the Elector Palatine. But he upheld Anglicanism against the 
Catholics, of whom a fev/ hotheads were inveigled into the Gunpowder Plot 
(1605), and against the Nonconformists, whom he harshly persecuted. 
Elizabeth had bequeathed absolute power to him; but a strong hand is 
needed to exercise uncontrolled authority, and, under a vain, weak prince. 
Parliament became very indocile. It was all in vain for James to send 
five members to the Tower (1614); the Commons refused the subsidies, 
and, in order to find the money which his lavishness made necessary for him, 
he had recourse to the most scandalous traffickings, put the court offices up 
at auction as well as the judgeships, and created and sold titles; then he 
squandered this illgotten wealth on greedy favorites, the most famous of whom 
is George Villiers, whom he advanced step by step to the title of Duke of 
Buckingham. When the Thirty Years' War broke out, James took advan- 
tage of the dangers which Protestantism was incurring in Germany to 
convene a new Parliament. But the Commons granted subsidies only on 
condition that he would satisfy the grievances of the nation, that is, make it 
supreme over everything, including religion, in which it was intolerantly 
Puritan. The old spirit of political liberty, repressed by the Tudors 
(religious liberty the Parliament would not have), was awakened. The 
king once more dissolved the assembly (1622), and, attracted by the bait 
of a rich dowry, he asked for his son the hand of a Spanish Infanta. This 
fresh outrage on the bigotry of the Parliament and the majority of the 
English people tailed, owing to Buckingham's folly and rudeness, but the 
marriage of the Prmce of Wales to Henrietta of France, sister of Louis 
XllI, was almost as unpopular, because it would place a Catholic princess 
on the throne of England. James died in 1625. He had published a work 
on free monarchies in which he aimed to prove the Divine right of kings, 
and the Anglican clergy, erecting this right into a dogma in their canons of 
1606, made absolute obedience to the prince an article of faith. It is 
curious to reflect that a Jesuit, Suarez, wrote a refutation of James' book. 
Thus was sealed everywhere, in the bosom of the Reformation, the alliance 
to the altar and the throne against public liberties, an alliance against which 
reaction was bound to come. 

The Agitation under Charles I. — ^The new king, a pious prince of 
irreproachable morals, was, then, from his youth, imbued with the principles 
of despotism. His wife secured for the Catholics a tolerance that offended 
the nation, and Buckingham, who continued to be the son's favorite after 
having been the father's, retained a standing that diminished the country's 
respect for the king. The struggle with the Commons was at once renewed. 

24 



370 The Age of Louis XIV 

That assembly was made up of younger members of noble families and of 
citizens of the middle class, which, having grown rich under Elizabeth and 
James, filled all the liberal professions. It had been the custom to vote im- 
posts for the duration of the reign; the lower House made this grant only 
for one year, and Charles in irritation dismissed the assembly. The Parlia- 
ment of 1626 went farther, it impeached Buckingham. There was another 
dissolution. With the hope of acquiring some popularity, Buckingham 
prevailed upon Charles to support the Protestants of France, and led a fleet 
to the aid of La Rochelle. The expedition failed through the commander's 
inexperience (1627). This check emboldened the Commons, who obliged 
the king to sanction the Bill of Rights, and then addressed to him two 
remonstrances, the one against the unlaw^ful levying of customs, the other 
against his favorite, who was described as a farmer of public misfortune. 
The king again prorogued Parliament, and a fanatic, John Felton, assassin- 
ated Buckingham (1628), Charles then called to office Archbishop Laud and 
the Earl of Strafford, and decided to govern without a Parliament, that is, 
against the spirit of the English constitution. 

But without a Parliament there were no subsidies, and consequently 
no means for taking part in the great events that were agitating Europe. 
This abstention belittled the English government in the estimation of its 
own subjects. Enormous fines imposed on opponents and Laud's cruelty to 
dissenters, as well as the suspicion that he was secretly '' Romanizing" the 
Anglican Church, increased the general discontent, which manifested itself 
in open sympathy for a determined citizen, Hampden, when he set up legal 
resistance against the ship-money tax (1636). Scotland, attacked by Laud 
in its Presbyterian doctrines, protested with an insurrection at Edinburgh 
(1637), and formed the association of the Covenant (1638), at one and the 
same time political and religious, which the English army, led by Straff^ord, 
refused to fight (1640). After having dispensed with Parliament for eleven 
years, the king acknowledging he was vanquished, convened the body 
known as the Short Parliament (1640), because, being refractory, it was 
soon dissolved, and replaced by another no less intractable, the famous Long 
Parliament. This body, exceeding its object, took possession of the levying 
of taxes and the judicial authority, abolished abnormal courts, proclaimed 
itself supreme over its own continuance, and impeached and tried Strafford 
and Laud, whom it sent to the scaffold (1641). Just then a formidable 
insurrection broke out in Ireland, where some five or six thousand Protest- 
ants perished. When the king asked for means to put down the rebels. 
Parliament answered with bitter remonstrances and voted the Militia Bill, 
which gave it the army. Charles tried to have the leaders of the opposition 
arrested in the Parliament house; and, as he did not succeed, he left London 
to begin a civil war that wasto lead him to the scaffold and produce Cromwell. 



The Age of Louis XIV 371 

England* S Great Civil War.— Parliament held the capital, the large 
cities, the seaports and the fleet, while the king had the larger part of the 
nobility, better versed in arms than the citizen militia. In the northern 
and western countries the royalists or Cavaliers predominated; the Parlia- 
mentarians or Roundheads in those of the east, the centre and the south- 
east, the richest, which, being contiguous, formed as it were a girdle around 
London. At first the king had the advantage. From Nottingham, where 
he had set up his standard, he marched on London. The Parliamentarians, 
defeated at Edge Hill and Worcester (1642), redoubled their energies. 
Among his tenants, friends and neighbors Hampden raised a regiment of 
infantry. Oliver Cromwell, who was then beginning to emerge from 
obscurity, out of farmers' and small landowners' sons in the eastern coun- 
ties formed choice companies that brought religious enthusiasm into conflict 
with the feelings of honor animating the cavaliers, and the Parliamentarians, 
victorious at Newbury, united with the Scotch in a solemn convenant. 

The Parliament was a coalition of parties — of the Presbyterians, who 
abolished the hierarchy in the Church and wished to retain it in the State; 
the Independents, who rejected the peerage as well as the episcopate, the 
political sovereignty of the king as well as his religious supremacy; the 
Puritans, who were divided into numerous sects, Levelers, Anabaptists, 
Millenarians, etc., who had at their head able men, and especially Oliver 
Cromwell, a man at the same time politic and enthusiastic, ambitious and 
mystic. In 1644 he won the victory of Marston Moor with his soldiers 
of the New Model nicknamed Ironsides, and then that of Newbury which 
saved the revolution. These successes worked in favor of the Independents, 
who, in a minority in Parliament, yet succeeded in passing the Renunciation 
Bill, by which the members gave up the holding of any public ofl&ce what- 
ever. This was equivalent to giving the army to the Independents. Crom- 
well then pushed the war vigorously. The king's last army was crushed at 
Naseby (1645), while his lieutenant, Montrose, was beaten by the Scotch 
Covenanters. The king in despair withdrew wearily into the Scotch 
camp, and the Scotch sold him to the Parliament for four hundred thousand 
pounds sterling (1647). 

The Presbyterians would gladly have come to terms with their captive. 
Supported by the army, Cromwell purged the Parliament, from which the 
Presbyterian members were expelled, and the Independents summoned 
the king before a court of justice which sent him to the scaffold (February 
9, 1649). This unjust death rnade his acts of violence and perfidy be 
forgotten; it revived the monarchical faith of England, and royalty once 
more became popular as soon as the king's head was severed from his 
body. 



372 The Age of Louis XIV 

Cromwell and the Commonwealth. — A republic had been pro- 
claimed; Ireland, which was CathoHc, and Scotland, w^hich remembered 
that the Stuarts were of Scottish origin, protested against the revolution. 
Cromwell subdued the one by an atrocious war, and, after the victories of 
Dunbar and Worcester he forced the other to acknowledge the authority 
of the London Parliament. In external policy the new government began 
v/ith a bold measure; the Navigation Act (1651) forbade entrance to English 
ports to all vessels loaded with merchandise that had not been produced 
on the soil or by the toil of the people whose flag the ship bore, a law which 
remained in force until January i, 1850. This was forcing England to 
develop its industries and its shipping, but it was also ruining Holland, 
which declared war. Men w^ere weary of the Rump Parliament. One 
day Cromwell went into its hall while it was in session, told the members 
that the Lord was no longer with them, and had them expelled by his 
soldiers, who put upon the door the notice: House for Rent (April 20, 
1653). But some time afterwards he ordered the election of a new Parlia- 
ment, which he declared to have been convened in the name of the Holy 
Ghost; but he soon dissolved this one also, and had himself proclaimed 
Lord Protector — he was king minus the title; but he used his power for 
the greatness and welfare of his country. At home he assured order and 
developed commerce and industry. Abroad, he saw his alliance begged 
by Spain and sought by France. Blake, his admiral, three times beat 
the Dutch, and forced them to abandon the provisioning of the English 
market. The Spaniards lost their galleons, Jamaica and Dunkerque; the 
Barbary Corsairs were chastised; the Pope was threatened with hearing the 
sound of English cannon at the Castle of St. Angelo if he did not order the 
duke of Savoy to stop persecuting the Waldenses. Thus did Cromwell 
revive the part that had been abandoned by the Stuarts, a part which Louis 
XIV was going to abandon, that of defender of Protestant interests. Unfor- 
tunately for England, he retained power only five years (1658). His son 
Richard succeeded him, but did not fill his place, and, after a few months, 
abdicated. England fell back into anarchy. Monk, an able general, 
prepared the way for the return of the Stuart dynasty. He dispersed the 
Rump, which had reconvened, called a convention Parliament willing to 
obey his behests and all parties united in recalling the king unconditionally 
(1660). 

The Counter-Revolution of 1660. — It was a mistake to declare that 
twenty years of revolution had passed over England in vain and to believe 
that the old order could be restored without any change; such imprudence 
and the persistence of hostility against Catholics was soon to make a second 



The Age of Louis XIV 373 

revolution necessary. The despotism of the Tudors had not, moreover, 
been the old order, and what was oldest in England was public liberty, which 
had undergone a temporary eclipse from weariness of thirty years of war 
in the fifteenth century. Then, under Tudor despotism, had come the 
Reformation, which, for thirty years more, had been the sole concern of 
men's minds, and the war with Philip II, in which there had been question 
of England's very existence. Face to face with such perils, the country had 
let the authority of its kings grow strong. But now that Spain was dying, 
France not yet threatening, and the religious question in abeyance, England 
wished to resume its old path. 

At first Charles II seemed to understand this state of men's minds; 
he remained faithful to the Protestantism of the Anglican Church, and let 
the Parliament enjoy its ancient privileges. But, frivolous and licentious, 
he soon felt obliged, from need of money, to make himself dependent on the 
Commons so as to obtain subsidies, or on a foreign power so as to draw a 
pension from it. His choice was soon made. The sight of France and the 
authority of its king reawakened in him the despotic instincts of his fathers, 
and fear of the Parliament, its remonstrances and its demands threw 
him into the arms of Louis XIV. He sold to that monarch Mardick and 
Dunkirk, two of Cromwell's conquests (1662); and, after the triple alliance 
of The Hague (1666), which his people imposed on him so as to stop France's 
progress in the Netherlands, he sold himself — Louis paid him a pension of 
two millions until his death. But the fear of anarchy which, in 1660, had 
cast England at the feet of Charles II had been dispelled, and gradually 
there had been formed in the nation, and in Parliament too, an opposition 
which, in 1673, was strong enough to enact the Test bill (excluding Catholics 
from ofl&ce), a law that was the prelude of that of 1679 (excluding them from 
Parliament), and even of the revolution of 1688. But at this point we 
will suspend our narrative of the history of Charles II, since we now knov/ 
that, during the first part of the reign of Louis XIV, England would be 
as powerless as Spain and the empire to curb the ambition of the new 
Charles V. Later on we will see the events that precipitated the Stuarts 
from the throne and made Great Britain the chief factor in the opposition 
against France. 

Organizers of France's Power. — After the death of Mazarin Louis 
XIV declared that he wished to govern without a prime minister, and during 
his whole after life that prince kept the pledge he had taken at the age of 
twenty-four to follow his kingly trade like a man. His was not a great 
mind, and yet, in spite of his faults, he was a great king, both from many 
personal qualities and because he possessed, at least in the first half of 



374 The Age of Louis XIV 

his reign, that which is preeminently the art of sovereigns, the talent for 
knowing how to make a proper choice of the depositaries of their power. 
Colbert, in charge of the finances, agriculture, commerce, industry and ship- 
ping from 1 66 1 to 1683 made these branches of national activity prosper. 
The period of his ministry is the most glorious of the reign of Louis XIV, 
for it moderated the king's ambition and developed the strength of the 
nation. He found a debt of four hundred and thirty millions, the revenues 
spent two years in advance, and the treasury receiving on y thirty-five 
of the eighty-four millions of annual taxes. He made a searching investiga- 
tion of malversations, reduced the poll-tax imposed on peasants only, 
but increased the indirect taxes paid by everybody; every year he drew up 
the Precautionary Report {etat de prevoyance), the origin of the modern 
budget, and raised the net revenues of the treasury to eighty-nine millions. 
He encouraged industry with bounties and protected it with tariffs that 
imposed high duties on like products coming from abroad. So as to facili- 
tate transactions and carryings, customs' dues were abolished in several 
provinces, roads were repaired or new ones were made, and the Languedoc 
canal was constructed between the ocean and the Mediterranean. He 
organized five great commercial companies (East Indies, West Indies, 
Levant, Senegal, and Northern), which competed with the merchants of 
London and Amsterdam, and with bonuses he encouraged the merchant 
marine. The military marine assumed such development that in 1692 over 
three hundred boats of all sizes could be armed, and, owing to the Maritime 
Inscription, which furnished seventy-eight thousand seamen, recruiting of 
the equipages v/as assured. The harbor of Rochefort was created, that 
of Dunkirk was redeemed from the English, Brest and Toulon were enlarged 
and a fine colonial empire, founded in the Antilles and North America, 
might have given this continent to French influence if men had known how 
to continue the great minister's plans. But overweening ambition des- 
troyed all his work and gave North America to the more liberty-loving 
English. 

At the same time Louvois was organizing the army, on which he 
imposed the uniform. He put the king's household on the footing which 
it retained until 1789, created the companies of grenadiers and the corps of 
hussars, and introduced the use of the bayonet on the muzzle of the gun. He 
founded the artillery schools of Douai, Metz and Strasburg, organized thirty 
regiments of militia equipped by the communes, and cadet companies, the 
origin of the schools of St. Cyr and the Polytechneque in Paris. Lastly, 
he subjected even the nobles who were ofl&cers to a severe discipline. A 
great engineer and a good citizen, Vauban, fortified the frontiers. It was 
unfortunate for Europe and the world, and ultimately most of all for France 
itself, that Louis XIV was so well served. 



The Age of Louis XIV 375 

The Flanders War. — Louis XIV, dazzled by the forces that his two 
able ministers placed at his disposal, put on most haughty airs towards all 
the powers. He demanded from the Pope and the king of Spain a most 
public satisfaction for supposed insults offered to his ambassadors, chastised 
the corsairs of Algiers and Tunis, and, only apparently forgetting the policy 
of Francis I, as will be seen later, he sent six thousand men to the emperor 
against the Turks, so as to appear as the protector of the empire. Upon the 
death of Philip IV, taking advantage of the Law of Devolution in force in 
Brabant, he pretended he was the heir to the Spanish Netherlands, through 
his wife, Maria Teresa, eldest sister of the new king of Spain, Charles II. 
The Dutch and England were at first kept neutral, and Spain, standing alone 
could not defend itself. In three months the French armies captured all 
the strong places of West Flanders, and in seventeen days, in the depth of 
winter, the whole of Franche Comte (1668). Then the maritime powers 
became alarmed; Holland, England and Sweden concluded the triple 
alHance of the Hague, and, as the king lacked in boldness on the only day 
on which he should have had it, he signed the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 
which gave him twelve cities of southern Flanders (1668). 

The Dutch War. — Four years of peace were spent in accumulating a 
terrible storm over a small country, Holland. Colbert, who wished to develop 
the maritime commerce of France felt uneasy about the fifteen thousand 
merchant vessels of the Dutch. Moreover, when he had imposed exorbi- 
tant duties on their cloths, they put onerous taxes on French wines and bran- 
dies. Colbert, then, was not opposed to a war which must, it seemed to him, 
rid French commerce of a formidabe competition. Louvois desired it so as 
to make himself necessary, and Louis XIV wished it that he might humiliate 
those republicans who had just cut his fortunes short. This was desertion 
of the policy. of Henry IV and Richelieu, protection of the small States and 
of Protestantism, and aggrandizements necessary for useless conquests; 
but Louis XIV was much more the successor of Philip II than the heir of 
the great cardinal and Henry of Beam, though he seemed to inherit the 
follies of all three. 

Sweden and England having been won by subsidies, he suddenly 
(1672) threw himself on Holland with one hundred thousand men com- 
manded by Turenne and Conde. The Rhine was crossed; every place 
opened its gates, and the French encamped four leagues from Amsterdam. 
But Louis XIV saved the Dutch by the slowness of his movements. They 
overthrew and murdered their high pensionary, John de Witt, and in his 
place as stathouder put William of Orange, who ordered the sluices opened, 
inundated the country, and compelled the invaders to retreat from the flood. 



376 The Age of Louis XIV 

At the same time he formed a formidable coaUtion against Louis; Spain, 
the emperor, several princes of Germany, and later on England, in spite of 
its king being a pensioner of Louis, united with Holland. France made 
headway everywhere; the king in person subdued Tranche Comte (1674), 
Turenne in an admirable campaign drove the imperialists from Alsace, 
but he was slain the following year, and Conde, after the bloody battle of 
Senef, did not appear again at the head of an army. Luxembourg and 
Crequi imperfectly filled the places of these two great generals. Yet the 
double invasion of France, from the north by the Spaniards and from 
the east by the imperialists, was driven back, while Duquesne and D'Estrees 
beat Holland's fleets and ravaged its colonies. England's desertion led 
Louis to accept the treaty of Nimwegen, which gave him Franche Comte 
along with fourteen Flemish towns and obliged Denmark and Brandenburg 
to restore all the conquests which they had taken from Sweden. So France 
came out enlarged from a struggle against the whole of Europe; its northern 
and eastern frontiers were removed farther from Paris. It was the most 
glorious moment of the reign, and it was also the starting point of the 
calamities that were to follow, for the Dutch war turned against France 
the coalitions that France had formerly formed against Austria, and it made 
the fortune of William of Orange, who in a few years was to be king of 
England. 

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. — ^This war was, then, a first 

blunder, and blunders were to be multiplied, for, after Colbert's death (1683) 
the hard and fast influence of Louvois and Madame de Maintenon now had 
no counterpoise. "If it has not pleased God," said the head of the house 
of Bourbon in the preamble to the Edict of Nantes, *'to permit His holy name 
to be adored by all our subjects in one and the same form of religion, let 
it be at least with one and the same intention — and entreat the Divine 
mercy to make them understand that in the observance of this ordinance 
lies the chief foundation of their union, tranquillity and repose, and of 
the restoration of this State in its former splendor. " These fine words 
had worthily opened the new era which Richelieu and Mazarin continued 
abroad with a view only to the enhancing of France's glory, as the controll- 
ing power of Europe, by their Protestant alliances, and, at home, by their 
respect for religious liberty. But it was reserved for Louis XIV, the man 
who in his age gave the Pope most trouble, as a Catholic to do the greatest 
harm to the reputation of the Catholic Church. On the morrow of his al- 
most creating a new schism by the Gallican articles of 1682, intoxicated by 
his apparent omnipotence, and misled by the fatal advice of a Party that has 
ever seriously injured the causes it has undertaken to defend, the politico- 



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The Age of Louis XIV 377 

Catholic party that has even recently made trouble for the Catholic Church 
in France, he undertook to repudiate the tolerance of Henry IV, as he 
had already repudiated his diplomacy. He wished that there be in his 
kingdom only a single religion, a Catholicism paying Rome only a nominal 
allegiance, as he endured there only one will, his own, only one law, that 
of the prince, master of the life and property of his subjects. For the purpose 
of converting the Protestants, he first sent into the districts where they 
were numerous his "booted missions" (dragonades), and in 1685 he 
decreed the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The Reformers were com- 
pelled to become converts or leave the kingdom, and their children were 
taken from them by force to be reared in the Catholic faith. To French 
industry they furnished the majority of its ablest workmen. Two or three 
hundred thousand left the kingdom, among them nine thousand sailors, 
twelve thousand soldiers and six hundred officers. A suburb of London 
was peopled with refugees; Berlin and Brandenburg received a large 
number of them; foreigners gained possession of the secrets of French 
industry, and among the scholars who have for two centuries done honor 
to Holland, Germany, England, America, and even Italy, are to be found 
many descendants of those proscribed by Louis XIV. For a time their 
fathers left behind them in France a civil war, that of the Camisards in the 
Cevennes, who were subdued only in 1703 by Villars, and over the whole of 
Europe they carried with them hatred of their persecutor. 

Political and Religious Agitation in England. — ^The answer of the 
Protestant powers to the revocation of the edict of Nantes was the revolution 
in England which precipitated the Catholic James II from the throne and 
put in his place the Calvinist William III. Charles II had become a hire- 
ling of Louis XIV, but England had not ratified the bargain. In 1668 it had 
compelled its king to unite with the Swedes and Dutch in trying to save 
the Spanish Netherlands. Again in 1674 it obliged him to abandon the 
French alliance, and then to turn against France, which brought about the 
peace of Nimwegen. The king, beaten on the political question, was so 
likewise on that of religion. He was suspected of being favorable to Cathol- 
icism, and Parliament passed the Test bill, which required office-holders to 
swear that they did not believe in transubstantiation. This was equivalent 
to closing all public employments against Catholics, subsequently supple- 
mented by their being shut out from Parliament, and this exclusion remained 
in force until 1829. The Popish Plot, imagined by a perjured wretch named 
Titus Gates, and the ascribing to Catholics by popular ignorance of the great 
London fire of 1666, gave provocation to extreme severities. Jesuits and 
others were hanged, the earl of Strafford was beheaded in spite of his three 



378 The Age of Louis XIV 

score and ten years, and the duke of York, the king's brother, who had 
abjured Protestantism, was threatened with being deprived of his rights to 
the crown. In order to restrain the royal will, the Whigs, the political 
ancestors of the modern Liberals, who predominated in Parliament, passed 
the famous Habeas Corpus act, which confirmed the law of individual 
guarantee written in the Great Charter and so often violated — every prisoner 
had to be examined by a judge within twenty-four hours after his arrest, and 
released absolutely or on bail if the accusation was false or insufficiently 
proven. But even yet the act could be suspended. 

James II and the Revolution of 1688. — ^Thus did Parliament at one 
and the same time restrain dissidents and the court. The English, then, were 
peacefully bringing about their internal revolution when the violent com- 
promised everything. The Puritans arose in Scotland, were crushed, and a 
new test act imposed on the Scotch passive obedience to the king. In 
London a conspiracy to prevent the duke of York from succeeding his 
brother led to the execution of several Whig leaders and the exile of others. 
This was a defeat for the Whig party. Accordingly James II took peaceful 
possession of the throne in 1685, the year of the revocation of the edict of 
Nantes. His illegitimate nephew, the duke of Monmouth, and the duke of 
Argyll tried indeed to overthrow him, but both perished after the defeat of 
Sedgmoor, and the odious Jeffreys sent a multitude of their followers to the 
scaffold. If the Anglican clergy and, among the aristocracy, those who were 
designated as Tories (Conservatives) were disposed to forgive the Stuarts 
for their despotism, they did not mean that royalty by right Divine should 
lead them to the Catholicism that might take back from them the large 
amount of Church property of which they were possessed. When James 
sent a solemn embassy to the Vatican to reconcile England with the Church 
of Rome, the archbishop of Canterbury protested, and he and six of his 
suffragans were sent to the Tower. 

These acts of violence and the birth (1688) of a prince of Wales whose 
mother was an Italian and a Catholic, and who would take precedence of 
the Calvinist William of Orange, James II's son-in-law, led the stathouder 
of Holland to listen to the offers of the Whigs. James, abandoned by 
everybody, fled to France, and the Parliament proclaimed King William III, 
after having made him sign the Declaration of Rights, which substituted 
royalty by choice for royalty by Divine right, and contained nearly all 
the guarantees of a free government, such as periodical meetings of Parlia- 
ment, voting of taxes, laws enacted by the concurrence of both houses and 
the king, trial by jury, the right of petition, etc., everything of importance, 
in fact, except liberty for Catholics. Some months later Locke, one of 



The Age of Louis XIV 379 

those persecuted by James II, wrote up the theory of the revolution of 1688, 
showing national sovereignty and liberty to be the only lawful and durable 
principles of a government. 

Thus was a new right, that of the peoples, rising in modern society, 
in opposition to the absolute right of kings, and mankind was entering upon 
a new stage. Feudalism had been progress on Carolingian barbarism; 
royalty had been another on feudal anarchy, but, after having constituted the 
modern nations, developed commerce and industry, and favored the 
expansion of art and literature, royalty pretended to perpetuate itself in its 
absolute law and asked the Catholic Church to help it in doing so. England 
had the good fortune, because of its insular position and its history, to lay 
hold of the principle which was to be that of the future, and to that wisdom 
already owes over two centuries of tranquillity, and the collapses that have 
taken olace around it. 



CHAPTER XXIV 



Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 



Full Development of Al)Solutism. — ^We have seen how England 
had made a beginning of its modern political Hberty, which it has taken so 
long to develop into its present condition; but for the advent of religious 
hberty its people had to wait another one hundred and forty years. In the 
former respect it had no imitator on the continent. On the contrary, the 
tendency was still, as it had been, in the opposite direction, and in some 
countries, such as Denmark and the States of the Elector of Brandenburg, 
it had been but recently introduced. Now, however, the typical represen- 
tative of absolutism was the government of France, over which a great 
economic change for the worse had also come, after the death of the great 
Colbert; and, in consequence of the wars following the English revolution, 
that change was to reduce the great body of the French people to direct 
misery. Louis XIV was to leave his kingdom without commerce or in- 
dustry, exhausted of both men and money, and with a public debt of nearly 
two billion dollars. The end of that long reign did not, then, fulfill the 
promise of its beginning. The acquisition of two provinces, Flanders and 
Franche Comte, and of a few cities, such as Strasburg, Landau and Dun- 
kerque, was but a mockery of compensation for the frightful miseries that 
had come upon France and that it would have been spared but for the 
inordinate ambition of its rulers. Besides, while it was sinking, other 
powers were rising, but Spain and Austria were not among them. Two 
new royalties, Sardinia and Prussia, were soon to come into existence, 
laying in Italy and Germany the foundations of political edifices whose 
proportions could not yet be well gauged, and with its new system of govern- 
ment England was assuming a part whose importance was to keep on grow- 
ing, that of a power preponderant in Europe through its commerce, its 
shipping, its navy, its colonies and its gold. 

In the incomparable splendor of his court, the magnificent festivities 

he gave, the sumptuous buildings he had erected, and his taste for art and 

literature; by the pompous bearing of his person, the dignity he assumed 

on every occasion, the calm confidence he had in his right and in his su- 

380 



Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 381 

perior intelligence, Louis was the most glorious manifestation of that roy- 
alty of an order at one and the same time old and new which made Bossuet 
exclaim: "O kings, ye are as gods!" To him men attributed the assertion, 
"I am the State;" and it was true, owing to an energetic centralization that 
made Versailles France and the prince's cabinet Versailles. He firmly be- 
lieved, and men believed with him, that the property as well as the life of 
his subjects belonged to him, that he was his people's intellect, will and 
action, that is, that twenty millions of men lived in him and for him. But 
his weaknesses and vices also were sacred, like those of the gods of Olym- 
pus whose images filled his palaces. If need were, justice served his pass- 
ions, the army his caprices, the public treasury his pleasures, and adultery 
became a monarchical institution which gave rank at court to the king's 
mistresses. Such a government might suit the Orient, which knows only 
force and bows to it resignedly; but it could not last in the western world, 
where mankind has gained consciousness of itself and of its rights. By de- 
veloping industry and commerce, and consequently the fortune of the 
peoples, and by favoring art and literature, that is, the development of the 
mind, Louis had himself prepared the way for the formation of two new 
powers that were first to undermine, and then overthrow, his system. 

Literature and Art in France. — The sixteenth century had produced 
the religious revolution, the eighteenth would produce political reforms. 
Placed between these two revolutionary ages, the seventeenth century was, 
and has remained, for France the great literary epoch. The generations 
living in times of storm go higher and lower, but never attain that calm 
beauty which is the reflection of an age of peace and yet of fruitfulness, in 
which art is its own object and reward. Long before Louis XIV took the 
government into his own hands and ruled as well as reigned (1661), France 
had already reaped half of the literary glory which the seventeenth cen- 
tury was reserving for it. Several of its greatest writers had produced 
their masterpieces, and nearly all were in full possession of their talent. 
"The Cid" had been played in 1636, and the "Discourse on Method" had 
appeared in 1637. Two years earlier the French Academy had been 
organized by Richelieu. The magnificent harvest then reaped by French 
intellect had, therefore, been a spontaneous growth — no one had done the 
sowing. The calm, under Henry IV and Richelieu, following the barren 
agitation of the religious struggles, had enabled the things of the mind to 
take precedence of those of v/ar, and when a few great men appeared, all 
the higher society followed them. Men discussed a beautiful verse as 
they had hitherto a fine shooting. Amid the refinements of thought and 
subtile distinctions of the Rambouillet mansion one would even feel lost 



382 Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 

without the strong tones of Corneille and his heroes and the supreme 
common sense of Moliere, Boileau and La Fontaine, without Bossuet's 
Bibhcal eloquence, Pascal's energy, and the penetrating grace of Racine. 
On this roll of honor let us also put the names of Madame de Sevigne on 
account of her Letters, of La Rochefoucauld for his Maxims, of La Bruyere 
for his Characters, of Fenelon for his Telemachus, of Saint-Simon for his 
formidable Memoirs, and of Bourdaloue for his Sermons. Scholars 
helped to clear up the chaos of France's beginnings and made Frenchmen 
better acquainted with antiquity. Casaubon, Scaliger, Saumaise, Du 
Cange, Baluze and the Benedictines were the most prominent of them. 
Bayle continued the skeptical tradition of Rabelais and Montaigne, which 
Voltaire would take up again in the following century. The great revolu- 
tionist of that time was Descartes, who asked that the mind be made as it 
were a blank sheet so as to free it from every prejudice and every error, 
and that then there be permitted to enter it only the truths which evidence 
would invincibly impose upon reason. By dint of prudence Descartes 
veiled the consequences of his Method from the eyes of his contemporaries, 
but that method became a powerful factor in the progress of philosophy, 
was adopted as the rule of science, and many have striven to make it the 
rule of hfe. In that age France had four painters of the first order, Pous- 
sin, Lesueur, Claude Lorrain and, some distance from them, Lebrun; 
an admirable sculptor, Puget; talented architects in Mansart and Per- 
rault; and an able musician, LuUi. 

Literature and Art in Other Cotintries. — In Italy there was literary 
as well as political decadence; in Spain an abundance, if not the highest 
order, of the drama in Lope de Vega and Calderon; Cervantes's "Don 
Quixote" belongs in date and subject to that other time when men still 
thought of the Middle Ages, if only to laugh at them. England had then 
her great Hterary age with Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden and Addison, and 
Germany its iron age — the Reformation in the hands of the princes seemed 
to have arrested thought. The Dutchman Grotius (Hugo de Groot) and 
the Swede PufFendorf defined the rights of peace and war in accordance 
with the principles of humanity and justice; the Englishman Hobbes, 
pensioned by Charles II, in his "Leviathan" held that man's natural 
state was war and that he needed a kindly despot to keep him from cutting 
his neighbor's throat — the theory of absolute power preached by phil- 
osophy, such as Bossuet had stated it in the name of religion, but which 
another philosopher, Locke, aimed to refute in his "Essay on Govern- 
ment," in which WiUiam Ill's adviser tried to show that civil society should 
be subject only to the power established by the consent of the community. 



Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 383 

His treatise appeared in 1690, just a century before the French Revolution, 
of which he was one of the precursors. For, once the necessity of common 
consent is established as the principle of all political society, what else is it 
but the acknowledgment of national sovereignty ? The English philos- 
opher's ideas, like those of Descartes, were to make their way through the 
eighteenth century and lead to Rousseau. Two other philosophers deserve 
mention on account of their influence in the order of metaphysical ideas, the 
pantheist Spinosa, an Amsterdam renegade from Judaism, and Leibnitz, 
whose genius was universal. In the arts the first rank then belonged to the 
Dutch and Flemish schools, represented by Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, 
and the two Teniers. Spain had Velasquez, Murillo and Ribera, who 
had no heirs; Italy had Guido and Bernino, the representatives of a 
decadence against which, however, Salvatore Rosa is a protest. England 
and Germany had not a single artist. 

The Sciences in the Seventeenth Century. — The universe is twofold ; 
it consists of a moral world and a physical world. Antiquity had traversed 
the one in all directions; it had extended and developed the faculties the 
germ of which God had planted in our clay, but of the physical world it 
knew scarcely anything. This ignorance was to last so long that the true 
methods of experimentation would be found and could be so only after men 
had become confident that the universe is governed by the immutable laws 
of an eternal wisdom, and not by the arbitrary wills of capricious powers. 
Alchemy, magic, astrology, all those follies of the Middle Ages, in fact, be- 
came sciences as soon as man, no longer stopping at isolated phenomena, 
strove to grasp the same laws producing them. This time begins in the six- 
teenth century with Copernicus, but it is only in the seventeenth that the 
revolution is completed and triumphs with Bacon and Galileo, the former 
proclaiming its necessity, the latter, by his discoveries, demonstrating its 
benefits. At the head of the scientific movement of this century Kepler 
of Wurtemburg, who proved the truth of the Copernican system; Galileo 
of Pisa, who demonstrated the earth's motion round the sun; the English- 
man Newton, who discovered the chief laws of optics and universal gravi- 
tation; the Saxon Leibnitz, who disputes with him the honor of having 
created differential calculus; Pascal, the inventor of the calculation of 
probabihties; and Descartes, as famous a scholar as he was a philosopher, for 
those powerful minds did not confine themselves to a single study. Follow- 
ing them, a multitude of men entered upon the paths which they had opened. 
Papin proved the power of condensed steam as a motor force; Roemer the 
velocity of light; Harvey the circulation of the blood; and Cassini along 
with Picard determined the meridian of Paris. To the thermometer con- 



384 Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 

structed by Galileo Torricelli added the barometer, Huygens the pendulum 
clock, and science found itself provided with valuable instruments for 
investigation (spectacles had been invented about 130, the telescope about 
1590, and the pneumatic machine in 1650). So in that age three countries, 
namely, Germany, which had Leibnitz, but let Kepler die almost in poverty; 
Italy, which did not properly appreciate Gahleo, and Spain, where one 
found only painters and dramatists, had decHned. The two nations, France 
and England, to which preponderance had passed, had, on the contrary, 
their great Hterary age. The former especially had put itself at the head 
of modern civiUzation, and, by the acknowledged superiority of its intellect 
and taste, had made all Europe accept the peaceful sway of its artists and 
its writers. That it so soon fell in other respects from its high eminence as 
the first power in Europe was due, as we are about to see, to the inordinate 
ambition of its ruler. 

The War of the League of Augsburg. — In the sixteenth and the first 
half of the seventeenth centuries France had undertaken to defend Protes- 
tantism, not from any love of the Reformation, but from sheer jealousy of 
the house of Hapsburg. It was this same feehng that made Louis XIV 
secretly prevail upon the Turks to invade Austria in violation of a treaty 
and besiege Vienna (1683), to try to keep Sobieski and his Poles from coming 
to the relief of that city, and to insult him after he had dispersed the Turkish 
hosts, while he himself kept an army on the Rhine to meet the Ottomans 
with the hope of making himself sole master of Christian Europe. But 
with Sobieski's success his poHcy changed. Long at odds with the Pope, 
he besought himself to placate him by revoking the edict of Nantes, per- 
secuting the Calvinists of France, and threatening the independence of the 
Protestant States on the continent as well as of imposing GalHcan Catholi- 
cism on England. But the part which he had abandoned England took up 
and made its fortune, as it had made that of Henry IV and Richelieu. 
While the Protestants driven from France were carrying everywhere their 
hatred of Louis, he was braving Europe as he pleased with conquests made 
when peace was supposed to exist. To himself he had adjudged his recent 
conquests as dependencies — twenty cities, among them Strasburg (1681). 
He treated the Pope arrogantly in return for a supposed insult offered to his 
ambassador, and made his clergy adopt the semi-schismatic Gallican 
articles (1682). He obHged the duke of Genoa to come and humble him- 
self at Versailles. He purchased Casale in Italy so that he could control 
the Po valley, claimed a part of the Palatinate as his sister-in-law's dowry, 
opposed the installation of the archbishop of Cologne, and occupied Bonn, 
Neuss and Kaiserswerth. The powers, made uneasy by this ambition, 



Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 385 

formed the League of Augsburg (1686), which was joined by England three 
years later. 

Louis aimed his first blows against William of Orange. He gave James 
II a magnificent welcome, and furnished him with a fleet and an army that 
landed in Ireland, but James's hopes were dashed at the Boyne and Aughrim 
(1690). Tourville, obliged by the king's orders to attack ninety-nine 
vessels with forty-four, met with disaster at La Hogue (1692). From that 
time the sea belonged to the English, and French commerce was at their 
mercy in spite of the exploits of bold captains like Pointis, Duguay-Trouin 
and Jean Bart, who played havoc with the English, Spanish and Dutch 
merchants. On land France retained the advantage. Luxembourg 
defeated the allies at Fleurus (1690), Steinkirk (1692) and Neerwinden 
(1693); Catinat occupied Piedmont and assured possession of it by the 
victories of Staffarde and Marseilles (1693). But France was exhausting 
itself in an unequal struggle. Half of the kingdom, Vauban admitted, was 
living on alms from the other half. Besides, Charles II was dying, the 
Spanish succession question was at last about to be opened, and Europe 
needed rest to prepare for that great event. In order to have peace, Louis 
divided his enemies, and the defection of the duke of Savoy, to whom his 
States, including Pignerol, were restored, led the allies to sign the treaty 
of Ryswick (1697). Louis XIV acknowledged William III as king of 
England, restored to the empire what the united chambers had adjudged 
to it except Alsace, put the duke of Lorraine again in possession of his duchy, 
but kept the western part of San Domingo (Hayti), Landau and Saarlouis. 

France in a Deplorable Plight. — ^The worst feature of the treaty of 
Ryswick was that it had really been imposed on Louis XIV by the sad 
plight to which his kingdom had been reduced, and by the prospect in a very 
short time of still greater difficulties. Already alarming at the close of 
Colbert's ministiy, the financial situation had been singularly aggravated 
under his successors. The expenses of the war had been met only by most 
deplorable and ruinous expedients, such as the creation of offices — which 
made Pontchartrain remark very justly: "Sire, every time it pleases Your 
Majesty to create an office, God creates a fool to purchase it" — sale of 
letters patent of nobility, depreciation of the currency, coining (since 1689) 
of the royal plate, etc. Naturally the imposts were not forgotten. The 
capitation tax, created in 1695, was, however, a step in advance, for it 
affected all Frenchmen, except the royal family and the indigent. But it by 
no means put an end to '* extraordinary affairs," as was pompously an- 
nounced in the preamble of the edict establishing it; it did not especially 
cover the deficit, for the general poverty was constantly reducing the returns 

25 



386 Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 

from the public revenues, in spite of new fiscal expedients. Emigration, 
war, excessive taxation, and dearth, terrible in 1692 and 1693, caused 
alarming depopulation. A letter from Fenelon to the king, dated May 4, 
1693, which was, perhaps, shown to Louis XIV without signature, contains 
lamentable details of this wretchedness of the kingdom. "The people, that 
has loved you so much, that has had so much confidence in you, is beginning 
to lose friendship, confidence, and even respect — Your victories and your 
conquests no longer gladden it; it is filled with bitterness and despair — 
Your peoples that you ought to love as your children, and that hitherto have 
been so devoted to you, are dying of hunger. The cultivation of the soil 
is almost abandoned, the cities and the rural districts are becoming depop- 
ulated, all trades are languishing and no longer support the workmen." 
We must make allowance in this letter for Fenelon's somewhat unjust 
pessimism when there was question of the government of Louis XIV; we 
must also deduct somewhat from the heartrending descriptions given by the 
overseers when they were invited (1698) to draw up reports on their prov- 
inces for the instruction of the duke of Burgundy, for those officials, 
notwithstanding what has been said of them, were rather inclined to exag- 
gerate the poverty of those under their administration so as to ward off 
increases of taxes, which were to themselves increases of embarrassment; 
but it remains none the less true that the public wealth had suffered a 
notable depression in the last quarter of the century. During the war of the 
League of Augsburg "men perished of hunger to the accompaniment of 
the Te Deum." A long peace would have been necessary. Now, only 
three years were to separate the treaty of Ryswick from the longest and 
most bitterly contested of Louis XIV's wars. 

War of the Spanish Succession. — ^With the death of Charles II of 
Spain the elder branch of the house of Austria was about to become extinct. 
For the inheritance three powers were disputing, namely, France, Austria 
and Bavaria. Louis XIV appealed to the rights of his wife, Maria Teresa, 
the eldest of the children of Philip IV; Leopold I had married the youngest 
daughter, Margaret; and the Elector of Bavaria put in a claim in the name 
of his son, a minor, grandson of this same Margaret. A first plan of 
partition of the Spanish monarchy, favored and guaranteed by William III, 
was rejected by Charles II, who supported the young duke of Bavaria. 
This child died. As France and Austria alone remained, Charles, made 
a will designating as his heir the duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV, 
with the hope of safeguarding the integrity of his monarchy. Instead of 
humoring Europe alarmed at this fresh expansion of the Bourbons, Louis 
XIV irritated it by reserving to the new king, Philip V, his right of eventual 



Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 387 

succession to the crown of St. Louis, which would have restored the mon- 
strous power of Charles V, to the advantage of France. He frightened 
Holland by putting French garrisons in the cities of the Netherlands. 
Lastly, after the death of the exiled James H, he acknowledged his son as 
James HI, king of England, in open violation of the treaty of Ryswick 
(1701). A new league was soon formed at The Hague between England 
and the United Provinces, and Prussia, the empire, Portugal, and even 
the duke of Savoy, Philip V's father-in-law, in succession gave their ad- 
hesion to it (1701-1703). Three superior men, Heinsius, grand pension- 
ary of Holland, Marlborough, leader of the Whig party in England, an 
able diplomatist and a great general, and Prince Eugene of Savoy, who had 
entered the service of Austria, managed the coalition. France had Chamil- 
lart to take the place of Colbert and Louvois; but its generals, with the 
exception of the incapable Villeroi, were better than its ministers. 

Austria began hostilities with reverses. Eugene was beaten at Luzzara 
by the duke of Vendome (1702), and another imperial army by Villars at 
Friedlingen and Hochstedt. But Marlborough landed in the Netherlands, 
and the archduke Charles in Portugal, while the duke of Savoy betrayed 
France and the Camisards (Huguenots) rebelled in the Cevennes. The loss 
of the second battle of Hochstedt or of Blenheim (1704) drove the French 
out of Germany; that of Ramillies (1706) gave the Netherlands to the 
allies, and that of Turin, in the same year, left them the Milanese and the 
kingdom of Naples. Toulon was threatened (1707). So as to keep the 
enemy in the Netherlands, Louis XIV once more mustered a magnificent 
army, but it was routed at Oudenarde (1708), and Lille surrendered after 
a two months' siege. The following winter added its severities to the 
disasters of France, and Louis sued for peace; but his enemies demanded 
that he himself would drive his grandson from Spain. He preferred to 
continue the struggle. One hundred thousand men marched out once 
more under Villars; they were worsted at Malplaquet (1709), where, how- 
ever, the allies lost twenty thousand, or more than twice as many as the 
French. 

The War in Spain — Treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt.— The English 
captured Gibraltar in 1 704, and, though they lost the naval battle of Malaga 
that same year, they retained it and the mastery of the sea. During the 
next two years Philip was almost driven out of Spain, but recovered his 
capital in October, 1706. The following campaign brought him a brilliant 
revenge in the crushing defeat inflicted on the allies at Almanza by Berwick 
(April, 1707). Ere long the Austrian claimant was confined to Catalonia. 
But Philip's fortunes were again at a low ebb when Vendome secured for 



388 Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 

him the throne of Spain by the victory of Villaviciosa (1710), and he was 
further helped when the archduke Charles, the alHes' protege, by his 
brother's death became emperor of Germany (1711). The equiHbrium of 
Europe would have been disturbed in a much more threatening manner if to 
the imperial crown he added those of Spain and Naples than if Philip V 
reigned at Madrid. England, then, had no more interest in that war; the 
Whigs, who wished to continue it, were driven from power, and the Tory 
ministry which succeeded broached negotiations with France. Some 
months later the imperial army was defeated at Denain by Villars (1712). 
This victory hastened the conclusion of peace, which was signed at Utrecht 
(1713) by England, Portugal, Savoy, Prussia and Holland. 

Louis accepted the order of succession established in England by the 
revolution of 1688, ceded Newfoundland and Acadia (Nova Scotia and New 
Brunswick) to the English, pledged himself to demolish the fortifications 
of Dunkirk, and consented to the crowns of France and Spain never being 
united on one and the same head. Holland obtained the right to garrison 
most of the fortified places of the Spanish Netherlands so as to keep them 
from falling into the hands of France. The duke of Savoy received Sicily 
with the title of king, and the Elector of Brandenburg was recognized as 
king of Prussia, a title he had purchased from the emperor (1701). The 
emperor alone continued the war; but the fall of Landau and Freiburg led 
him to sign the treaty of Rastadt (1714), by which he acquired a part of the 
external domains of Spain, the Netherlands, Naples, Sardinia, the Milanese 
and Tuscany. France had to sacrifice much; but as Spain, now without 
the Netherlands, became its natural ally, instead of being, as it had been for 
two centuries, its constant enemy, its southern frontier was secure, and 
consequently it was stronger in the northeast. Louis XIV died soon after- 
wards (17 1 5), hated and grossly insulted by his oppressed people, whom he 
had left in worse condition than that already described. 

Russia and Poland at This Epoch. — To the Greeks and the Romans 
eastern and northern Europe had been the unknown land. In the Middle 
Ages the activity of the peoples was displayed in the central and western 
countries, while the Slavs and the Scandinavians remained enveloped in a 
darkness that, for this rapid review of general history, it is needless to dispel. 
Early in the thirteenth century the Russians had been conquered by the 
Mongols, against whom the Poles had won honor and power; and we have 
seen the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus m.aking a striking record in the 
empire. Owing to their victories over the Germans, the Poles and the 
Russians, the Baltic, in the middle of the seventeenth century, was a Swedish 
lake enveloped by a thin line of fortified posts — a fragile domination because 



Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 389 

it was imperfectly organized and surrounded by enemies interested in its 
destruction. Poland still extended from the Carpathians to the Baltic and 
from the Oder to the sources of the Dnieper and the Volga; but its anarchi- 
cal constitution and its elective royalty left it defenceless against foreign 
attack. 

The Russians, who had thrown off the Tartar yoke in the fifteenth 
century, but had adopted their despotic form of government, and whom the 
Poles, the Swedes and the duke of Courtland shut out from access to the 
southern Baltic, were on the south separated from the Black Sea by the 
warlike republic of the Cossacks, turbulent subjects of Poland, and by the 
Tartar hordes. They had a free outlet only towards the desert regions of 
Siberia, which they had conquered in the sixteenth century. The fall of the 
powerful republic of Novgorod (1476) had opened to them the approaches 
to the icy ocean and the eastern Baltic; by the destruction of the Tartars of 
Astrakhan they had reached the Caspian Sea, and by the treaty of Wilna 
(1656) they had obliged the Poles to cede to them Smolensk, Tchernigov and 
the Ukraine, their first advance towards the west. They already had 
formidable elements of power. Ivan III had abolished in his family the 
law of appanages, thus estabhshing unity of power and of the State; he had, 
on the contrary, maintained it for the nobility, which consequently remained 
divided and weakened. In the sixteenth century Ivan IV had spent five 
years in bending the boyars to the yoke with the implacable cruelty which 
won for him the surname of Terrible, and a ukase of 1593 had reduced all 
the peasants to serfdom of the glebe by prohibiting them from changing 
master and land. After his death there was anarchy until 1613, when, 
after the country had been almost conquered by Poland, Russia revived 
under the new dynasty of the Romanoffs. 

Peter the Great and Charles XII. — He who was to be the creator of 
modern Russian power received the title of czar in 1682 at the age of ten. 
Guided by the Genevan Lefort, who had boasted to him of the arts of the 
west, in 1697 he betook himself to Saardam in Holland to learn shipbuilding 
there, and then went to study England and its industry, Germany and its 
military organization. The news of a revolt of the Strelitzes reached him 
at Vienna; he hastened to Moscow, had two thousand of them hanged or 
broken on the wheel, five thousand decapitated, and then began reforms. 
He organized regiments in which he obliged the sons of the boyars to serve 
as soldiers before being officers; he founded schools for mathematics, 
astronomy and seamanship; and he undertook to join the Don with the 
Volga by a canal; but a great war stopped his works. 

The preponderance of Sweden v/as weighing on its neighbors. Upon 



39© Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 

the death of its king, Charles XI, Russia, Denmark and Poland thought 
the opportunity favorable to curtail the power of a young prince of eighteen 
by taking their Baltic provinces from the Swedes (1700). "If Charles XII 
was not Alexander, he was Alexander's first soldier;" he forestalled attack 
by an impetuous invasion of Denmark, marched against eighty thousand 
Russians, whom he defeated at Narva with eight thousand Swedes, drove 
the Saxons from Livonia, pursued them into Saxony, dethroned Augustus 
II, and by the treaty of Altranstadt obliged him to abdicate his Polish crown 
in favor of Stanislas Leczinski. But while he was wasting five years (1701- 
1706) in these wars, Peter the Great was creating an empire behind him, 
was forming an army on the model of those he had seen in the west, had 
conquered Ingria and Carelia, and had founded St. Petersburg (1703) so 
as to take possession of the Gulf of Finland. Charles XII then returned 
against him; but while trying to join the hetman of the Cossacks, Mazeppa, 
who had promised him one hundred thousand men, he lost his way in the 
Pinsk marshes, giving the czar time to overwhelm Mazeppa and defeat a 
Swedish army coming to his aid. The severe winter of 1708-9 increased 
his distress, and his defeat at Pultawa obliged him to flee with five hundred 
horsemen to the Turks. From Bender in Bessarabia, his place of refuge, 
he urged the Porte against the Russians. One hundred and fifty thousand 
Ottomans crossed the Danube, and Peter, surrounded in his camp on the 
banks of the Pruth, was about to perish there when the grand vizier let him- 
self be bought (171 1). The czar restored Azof and pledged himself to 
withdraw his troops from Poland. By this treaty Charles XII was con- 
quered for the second time. He persisted in remaining three years more 
in Turkey, and in 17 14 made his way back to Sweden, which the northern 
powers were dismembering — George I of England, as Elector of Hanover, 
purchased Bremen and Verden; and the king of Prussia took Stettin and 
Pomerania. Stralsund still resisted; Charles XII threw himself into it, 
defended it for a month, then returned to Sweden, and went to meet his 
death at the siege of Frederickshall, perhaps by treason (1718). He left 
Sweden exhausted by that fifteen years' war, deprived of its foreign posses- 
sions, without agriculture, industry or commerce, after having lost a quarter 
of a million men, the pick of its population, and its ascendancy in northern 
Europe. That heroic adventurer had overthrown the fortune of his people 
and ruined his country for a century. 

Work and Character of Peter the Great. — Peter, on the contrary, 
made his people's greatness. He granted peace to the Swedes only by the 
treaty of Nystadt (1721), which made them abandon all claim to Livonia, 
Esthonia, Ingria, a part of Carelia, of the Viborg country and of Finland. 



Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 391 

When the French ambassador solicited less severe conditions, Peter answered 
"I do not want to see my neighbor's lands from my windows." So did 
Sweden fall and Russia rise, and a twofold example was given to the world 
of what a single man can do for the misfortune or prosperity of the nations 
which are not yet themselves in a state to govern their own destinies. In 
1 716 the czar undertook another journey to western Europe. This time 
he went to France, to which he offered to take Sweden's place as an ally 
against Austria. Cardinal Dubois, sold to England, had the proposal 
rejected. A century later the Restoration took up this policy, but had not 
time to make it prevail, a policy which Napoleon had also thought of for a 
moment and which might have saved him, and which was to be revived 
by the Third Republic, as a safeguard no longer against Austria, but against 
Prussia grown into the new German empire. This journey was as fruitful 
as the former for the development of Russia's resources; thereby it gained 
workmen of every sort, engineers, manufactures and foundries. The czar 
established uniformity of weights and measures, a commerce court, canals, 
and building lumber yards. He opened the mines of Siberia, roads for 
the provisions from China, Persia and India, and he had a presentiment 
of the future of the Amour river emptying into the Eastern Sea. So as to 
bring the clergy into absolute dependence upon himself, for the patriarch 
he substituted a synod which the czar recognized as supreme head of the 
Church, and he made the Russian people a regiment by applying the mili- 
tary hierarchy to the whole administration of the empire. His son, Alexis, 
seemed opposed to these reforms; he had him tried, condemned to death, 
and, no doubt, executed. At least that prince died very soon after the 
sentence had been passed, and many of his accomplices perished — a general 
was impaled and an archbishop tortured, and the empress Eudoxia received 
the knout. With this savage energy he succeeded, as he himself said, in 
dressing his drove of cattle as men. "The czar Peter," said Frederick 
II, "was the aqua fortis that ate up the iron." He died in 1725 in conse- 
quence of his debaucheries. 

The Rise of Prussia. — A new power had appeared upon the scene 
that was destined not only to supplant France as the humiliater of Austria, 
but to humble the Gallic power as well. This new power was Prussia. 
In 141 7 Frederick of Hohenzollern, landgrave of Niirnberg, purchased 
from the emperor Sigismund the margravate of Brandenburg, which had 
one of the seven Electoral voices, and Albert, the Ulysses of the North 
(1469), founded the power of his house by decreeing that future acquisi- 
tions would always be united with the Electorate, which would remain 
indivisible. In 1618 came by inheritance the acquisition of ducal Prussia 



392 Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 

(Kcenigsberg), in 1624 that of the duchy of Cleves, with the counties of 
Mark and Ravensburg, so that the State of the Hohenzollerns, extending 
from the Meuse to the Niemen, formed on the Rhine, the Elbe and the 
east bank of the Vistula three groups separated by provinces the possession 
of which was thereafter the object of all their undertakings. By the treaty 
of Westphalia the Great Elector strengthened himself on the Elbe by occu- 
pying Magdeburg and approached the Vistula by acquiring farther Pome- 
rania (1648). Though a member of the League of the Rhine which Mazarin 
had formed under the protectorate of France, Frederick William supported 
Holland against Louis XIV and founded the reputation of the Prussian 
army by defeating the ^Swedes at Fehrbellin. As his States were thinly 
peopled, he attracted to them Dutch colonists and Protestants driven from 
France by the revocation of the edict of Nantes, who settled in Berlin, his 
new capital. His son, Frederick HI, purchased from the emperor the title 
of king and crowned himself at Kcenigsberg (1701), while remaining a 
mere Elector in Brandenburg, since ducal Prussia, which formed the new 
kingdom, was not comprised within the limits of the German empire. 
Frederick William I (17 13), the Sergeant King, created the Prussian army, 
which contained as many as eighty thousand men, and spent his life in 
drilling them, but without making much use of them. Yet he acquired 
from Sweden nearly all of hither Pomerania with Stettin, and he was 
already thinking of the dismemberment of Poland. 

The Heritage of Louis XIV. — ^The "Grand Monarque's" successor 
was only five years old, and the parliament conferred the regency on his 
relative, the duke of Orleans, an intelligent and brave prince, kind even 
to weakness, but scandalously debauched, who intrusted the real authority 
to his former preceptor, Cardinal Dubois. Against Philip V of Spain, 
nearer by blood to the throne of France than the regent, Dubois formed a 
close union with England, which pensioned him, and France's enemies 
of yesterday gleefully saw France arming against the Spaniards, its recent 
friends, when Cardinal Alberoni, Philip's minister, formed the design of 
recovering for Spain what the treaty of Utrecht had taken from it. He 
wished to keep Austria busy with the Turks, to overthrov/ the regent by a 
conspiracy, and to restore the Stuarts with the sword of Charles XH. But 
Prince Eugene defeated the Turks at Belgrade (171 7); the conspiracy of 
Cellamare failed; Charles XH perished in Norway; the English destroyed 
the Spanish fleet near Messina; the French entered Navarre, and Spain 
again came out diminished from that struggle in which France had won 
nothing but the retention in power of the regent and Dubois. 

Louis XIV had left financial ruin behind him. The State owed three 



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Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 393 

and a half thousand miUions, nearly a third of which was immediately 
demandable. Two years' revenues had been expended in advance, and 
in a budget of one hundred and sixty-five millions there was a deficit of 
seventy-eight millions. The regent, after having exhausted every expedient 
unsuccessfully, decided to have recourse to Law's gamblings. That bold 
Scotch financier had founded a bank that was marvelously successful, and 
the Company of the Indies, which was a complete failure, after having 
succeeded but too well. By clever manoeuvres the shares of the company 
were raised to the factitious value of twelve thousand millions, while the 
annual dividends did not exceed eighty millions when men's eyes were 
opened. To save the company, Law united it with the bank, and thereby 
came a double ruin. The public, which but lately had jostled one another 
in the Rue Quincampoix to get paper, now trampled one another down to 
get their cash. Everything crumbled, and Law fled amid the maledictions 
of the people; but he had opened new horizons to the power of credit. 
The regency is sadly famous for the scandalous depravity of morals that 
in high society suddenly succeeded the hypocritical devotion of the later 
years of Louis XIV. 

On the Eve of Another Great War. — Both the regent and Dubois 
died in 1723. The ministry of the duke of Bourbon is remarkable only 
for the marriage of Louis XV to the daughter of Stanislas Leczinski (1725), 
whom Charles XII had for a short time made king of Poland. An ambi- 
tious septuagenarian, Fleury, bishop of Frejus and preceptor to the king, 
overthrew him and was prime minister from 1726 to 1743. His whole 
administration tended to make economy prevail in finance and peace in 
Europe, even at the expense of France's international importance, espe- 
cially in naval matters, which he sacrificed to England's demands. Upon 
the death of Augustus II the immense majority of the Poles elected Stanislas 
Leczinski, while the Elector of Saxony was named under the protection of 
Russian bayonets (1733). The king of France could not abandon his 
father-in-law; but Fleury sent to him a laughable aid of fifteen hundred 
men, and the devotedness of the count of Plelo did not save Stanislas, \vho 
escaped with great difficulty to Dantzig and then returned to France (1734). 
With a view to wiping out this disgrace Fleury entered into alliance with 
Savoy and Spain against Austria, whom they desired to drive from Italy. 
This was at least a French policy, and it partly succeeded. After victories 
at Parma and Guastalla, France imposed the treaty of Vienna on the 
emperor (1738). In exchange for the throne of Poland, Stanislas received 
the duchy of Lorraine, to revert after his death to the king of France; the 
duke of Lorraine had Tuscany as an indemnity; the Infante Don Carlos 



394 Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 

had Sicily (which Savoy had exchanged for Sardinia in 1720) and the 
kingdom of Naples, and the king of Sardinia two Milanese provinces. 
More might have been obtained, and then could have been brought about 
what was accomplished in 1859, by giving the whole of the Milanese to 
Piedmont, One of the French ministers so wished; but Fleury refused, 
so as to come to terms more speedily. "After the peace of Vienna," says 
Frederick II, "France was the arbiter of Europe." It had just conquered 
Austria and Italy, and it was going to aid the Turks by giving them Servia 
through the treaty of Belgrade (1739). At that time, then, Austria was 
receding everywhere, in Italy as well as on the Danube; two great wars 
were soon to bring it still lower, and it was to involve France in its fall. 

War of the Austrian Succession. — ^While the new Protestant power, 
Prussia, which inherited the part played by Sweden under Gustavus Adol- 
phus, was growing in the north, Catholic Austria was declining. Caught 
between the Protestants of Germany supported by Sweden, the Turks still 
retaining a remnant of vigor, and the France of Richelieu, Mazarin and 
Louis XIV, Austria had received many hard blows, but had been saved by 
a great general and relieved by fortunate circumstances. Eugene, the 
vanquished of Denain, was victorious over the Turks at Zenta (1697), 
Peterwaradein (1716), and Belgrade (1717); and the Spanish succession 
war won for Austria the Netherlands, the Milanese and Naples (exchanged 
later on for Parma and Piacenza), possessions which enlarged without 
strengthening it. With the emperor Charles VI, who died the same year 
as the Sergeant King (1740), the male line of the Hapsburgs became ex- 
tinct. So as to assure his heritage to his daughter, Maria Teresa, Charles 
had taken every diplomatic precaution, but none military Scarcely had 
he expired when the parchments signed with him were torn up, and five 
pretenders claimed, some, like the king of Spain and the Electors of Bavaria 
and Saxony, the whole of the inheritance, the others provinces to suit them, 
like the king of Sardinia, who coveted the Milanese, and Frederick II, 
to whom Silesia was a great temptation. Hostilities had already broken 
out between the English and the Spaniards, concerning the contraband 
trade which the former were carrying on in the latters' colonies. General 
war was grafted on this special war, as Frederick II had drawn France 
into alliance with him, which threw England into that with Maria Teresa. 
This prince, wholly concerned hitherto with art and literature, suddenly 
revealed himself as a great king and the ablest captain of his age. At 
■Molwitz he struck the first blow of that war with a victory over Prince 
Eugene's veterans, and that victory gave him Silesia, while the French 
invaded Bohemia and the duke of Bavaria had himself crowned as emperor. 



Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 395 

Aggrandizement of Prussia. — Subsidies from England and the 
enthusiasm of the Hungarians furnished Maria Teresa with unexpected 
resources; and the surrender of Silesia to Frederick, who forgot the word 
he had given to France, made to fall on the latter the whole weight of a war 
in which it had no interest, since it was shut out from any acquisition on 
the side of the Netherlands (1743). For a while the French army was shut 
up in Prague, but, in the depth of winter, it succeeded in making its escape, 
and, having recovered Bohemia, the Austrians invaded Bavaria. France's 
eastern provinces were then menaced with a double attack, from the Pal- 
atinate by fifty thousand Anglo-Germans whom Marshal de Noailles 
stopped at Dettingen, and towards Alsace by the imperialists. Louis XV, 
or rather Marshal Saxe, had entered the Netherlands v^7ith one hundred 
and twenty thousand men who had captured several cities. These successes 
came to an end when it was necessary to send a large detachment to cover 
the French provinces on the Rhine. But Austria had recovered so rapidly 
that Frederick feared for his conquests. He took up arms again and 
invaded Bohemia, a diversion which released the line on the Rhine and 
permitted the would-be emperor, Charles VH, to return to Munich, where 
his son treated with Maria Teresa (1745). The war, then, had no further 
object for France, but it remained to bring about peace. France won 
glory in the campaign of 1745. While Frederick was again beating Austria 
and imposing on it the treaty of Dresden, Marshal Saxe won over the 
English the battle of Fontenoy, which opened Brussels to him, and the 
Stuart pretender, Charles Edward, landed in Scotland to raise the High- 
landers against the house of Hanover, which had been seated on the throne 
of England since the death of Queen Anne (17 14). The victories of 
Raucoux and Laufeld, and the capture of Maestricht by Marshal Saxe, 
just when Russia, drawn into the coalition, was sending ten thousand men 
to the Rhine, led France's enemies to give it peace. Victorious on the 
continent, it had suffered much on sea, where its shipping had been almost 
destroyed, and it had lost in India the opportunity to found an empire 
which Dupleix was beginning to build. By the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle 
(1748) England and France restored each other's conquests, but Silesia 
was guaranteed to Prussia. 

The Seven Years* War, — France used peace to reconstruct its navy 
and extend its commerce. England became angry at this revival, and, 
without a declaration of war, captured French vessels sailing under guaran- 
tee of treaties (1755). It was to the interest of the French to give this 
fresh struggle an exclusively maritime character, but the English offered 
gold to anyone who would attack France on the continent, and Frederick 



396 Rise of England, Russia and Prussia 

II, uneasy on account of an unexpected understanding between France 
and Austria, accepted subsidies. Since the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle he 
had won the good will of Silesia by wise measures; he had begun a great 
work of reform of justice and finance, and had incorporated East Frisia 
in his kingdom. But his wit belied his policy. By his epigrams he had 
offended the czarina Elizabeth and Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV's 
mistress. Maria Teresa, who could not look upon a Silesian without 
weeping, cleverly fanned these embers of anger and turned against Prussia 
the coalition which had threatened it in the preceding war. Frederick 
forestalled his enemies with an invasion of Saxony, whose troops he incor- 
porated in his army, penetrated into Bohemia, and there defeated the 
Austrians at Lowositz. Then France threw two armies into Germany, 
one of which forced the Anglo-Hanoverians to capitulate, while the other 
was shamefully beaten at Rosbach (1757). For several years the king of 
Prussia maintained a heroic struggle against Austria, Russia, France and 
Sweden, with his own resources, his genius and subsidies from England, 
a struggle marked by the battles of Prague, Kollin, Jaegerndorf, Zorndorf, 
Kuenersdorf (1759, where his power was almost annihilated by the Rus- 
sians), Liegnitz, Minden and Crefeldt. In 1761 he seemed exhausted; 
but he was saved by the death of the czarina, whose successor, Peter III, 
an admirer of the Prussian hero, hastened to recall the Russian troops. 
A last campaign gave Silesia back to him and brought Austria to terms. 
France had not been encroached upon, but it had lost Pondichery, Quebec, 
and its whole navy. It accepted the treaty of Paris (1763). 

The result of the Seven Years' War was, on the one hand, the con- 
tinental greatness of Prussia and the maritime supremacy of England, on 
the other the humiliation of Austria and the decline of France. It was 
reckoned that this war had cost the lives of a million men; in Prussia alone 
nearly fifteen thousand houses had been burned. After having saved his 
country and by glory established a new people in Europe, Frederick II 
kept it from wretchedness by an able and vigilant administration. He 
multiplied the drainings of marshes, dikes, canals and manufactures; he 
created a new system of reality credit, reorganized public instruction, and 
reformed the administration of justice. In 1772 he took part in the dis- 
memberment of Poland, as will be seen later on, and in 1777 he inflicted a 
fresh political defeat on Austria by compelling it to abandon Bavaria, 
which it had purchased after the death of the last Elector. Thus against 
half-Slav Austria did Frederick make himself the protector of the German 
empire, until such time as his successors should make themselves its masters. 



CHAPTER XXV 
Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 



England from 1688 to 1763. — Among the results of the English 
revolution of 1688 were, at home, the revival of the national liberties, both 
political and religious (except in regard to Catholics), and, abroad, the sub- 
stituting of strong and resourceful England for exhausted Holland as an 
Adversary of France. The wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish 
succession ruined France on sea, and as that of Holland was under the di- 
rection of William HI, England took possession of the ocean, which its 
merchants covered with their ships. When WiUiam died (1702), he was 
succeeded by James H's second daughter, Anne, a zealous Protestant, 
under whom was brought about (1707) legislative union between England 
and Scotland, thereafter to be officially known as the kingdom of Great 
Britain. Until 1710, with public power in the hands of the Whigs, the 
representatives of the revolution, and therefore bitter enemies of Louis 
XIV, Anne continued her brother-in-law's policy and the war against 
France in which Marlborough won such high distinction. The coming 
of the Tories into power brought about the peace of Utrecht (1713), and, 
upon the queen's death, ParHament gave the crown to George of Bruns- 
wick, Elector of Hanover (1714). The new king knew neither a word of 
English nor an article of the constitution, but he left the government to 
Robert Walpole, leader of the Whigs, who had recovered the majority 
in ParHament and retained it until 1742, owing to the methods used by the 
prime minister, the purchase of both voters and members. Walpole needed 
peace to govern with such means, and the outbreak of the war for the 
Austrian succession overthrew him. England did not gain a foot of land 
by that war, and much devastation was caused by the invasion of the 
Young Pretender (1745), with heavy debts incurred, eighty thousand 
pounds sterling instead of fifty thousand. At that time the Great Com- 
moner (William Pitt) was already attracting England's attention to him- 
self. In 1757 he became war minister and actual head of the government, 
and France only too well felt his talents and his hatred for the next few 

years. 

^ 397 



398 Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 

George I had died in 1727, and George II ended his reign in 1760. 
Both had been faithful to the pact of 1688. Having neither a soldier nor a 
party of their own, they had accepted the ministers whom the majority 
in Parliament gave to them, so that to change policy Great Britain had only 
to make a change of ministry. The Whigs or the Tories, that is, the 
Liberals or the Conservatives, came into power, therefore, by vote of the 
House of Commons, and not by a street riot. That is the reason why/ 
England has been able, during the past two centuries and more, to bring 
about many reforms, and has never had either excuse or need for a revolu- 
tion. George III, who reigned for sixty years (until 1820), became insane 
on several occasions, but government action was never weakened on that ac- 
count. At London the king reigns, but does not rule. He accepts the decrees 
of his Parliament which his ministers lay before him for that purpose. 
He is a part of the mechanism necessary to put the political machine in 
motion, but he does not command its movements, so that by his permanence 
he represents conservation, while the ministry, by its instability, guarantees 
progress. 

English and French Beginnings in India. — ^There was a time, 
however, when this progress seemed in danger of being arrested. No 
sooner had he ascended the throne than George III made up his mind 
to rule as well as reign, and to do this he had recourse to Walpole's methods 
to secure a majority in the House of Commons. At his bidding that House 
undertook to impose taxes on England's original colonies in North America, 
and thus produced a rebelHon that lost them to the mother country and 
brought into existence a new nation that was destined to give lessons in 
liberty to the nations of the Old World. But, notwithstanding this loss, 
England during the last two European wars had entered upon a course 
that was to put it far in the lead in regard to colonial possessions. In the 
East Indies alone it now rules more territory, with a much larger population, 
than that of the whole of Europe minus Russia. 

England's humble beginnings in Hindustan, even up to this time, gave 
the world no reason to foresee the future that was in store for it there. 
An English East India Company had been founded in 1599, thus antedating 
by three years the famous Dutch Company that ruined the Portuguese 
trading posts' there; but this did not keep Holland from gradually excluding 
England from the Sunda and Spice Islands and from completely echpsing 
it for a long time. Trading posts at Surat, Madras (1624) and Fort George 
were the first creations of the East India Company. Bombay, the dowry 
of Catharine of Braganza (wife of Charles II), was given to it in 1662. 
The last of the Mogul emperors of India, Aurung Zeb, was on the point of 



Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 399 

taking this position from it in punishment for the acts of brigandage of 
some EngHsh merchants; but he let himself be persuaded to refrain (1679). 
The following year he conceded to them the territory on which Calcutta 
was soon to rise. Thus had the capitals of the three future Presidencies 
been acquired. From Calcutta the EngHsh came in touch with the French 
settlement at Chandernagore, and from Madras they overlooked Pon- 
dichery. There also, then, a conflict was sooner or later inevitable. In 
spite of the failure of various companies patronized by Henry IV, Riche- 
lieu and Colbert, the foundations of a future French empire in Hindustan 
had been laid. The Dutchman Caron, in the service of the French East 
India Company, had founded marts at Surat and MazuHpatam; Pon- 
dichery had arisen (1683) on territory purchased from a native prince, and 
Chandernagore (1688) on land obtained from the Grand Mogul. For 
some time the development of the two last-named towns was hampered 
by continual wars, and their development did not really set in until 1735. 
Mahe had been acquired eight years before, and Karikal was added in 
1739. The state of semi-anarchy prevailing at this time favored the pro- 
gress of the Europeans, who were soon to fight for the spoils. But before 
telling of these wars of rivalry and conquest, let us take a survey of the 
previous history of the Hindu peninsula. 

Early Inhabitants and Literature of Hindustan. — India, which 
consists of the two great valleys of the Indus and the Ganges (Hindustan 
properly so called) and of a peninsula (the Dekkan), was first peopled by a 
black race now represented only by the Ghonds, then by Turanian tribes, 
Tamuls, TeHngas, etc., and lastly by men with brown and reddish skinsy 
who seem to have formed the chief element of the population along thei 
northern coast of the Indian Ocean, and with whom Herodotus became 
acquainted in Gedrosia, giving them the name of Ethiopians. But it was 
the Aryans, coming southeast from beyond the Hindu Kush, who were to 
make a place in history for India. Crossing the Indus, they subdued 
the reign of the Punjaub (Five Rivers) after a prolonged struggle the 
memory of which is preserved in the Vedas (Knowledge). This, the oldest 
of their sacred books, is a collection of hymns and prayers that seems to 
have been compiled not earlier than 1500 B. C. Fifteen centuries before 
our era, perhaps, these Aryans of the Punjaub conquered the fertile valley 
of the Ganges, which, like the Nile, has its periodical inundations, and 
advanced as far as its delta, which unites with the outlet of the Brahma- 
pootra an almost equally large river rising on the northern slopes of the Him* 
alayas and turning their eastern end. Stopped in that direction by the 
mountains and the mass of the Mongol nations of Indo-China, they began 



400 Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 

to war with one another. The Mahabharata, a great Indian epic of two 
hundred and fifty thousand verses, tells us also of the terrible wars of the 
Kurus and the Panda vas, which was brought to an end only by the hero 
Krishna, the incarnation of the god Vishnu. This Indian IHad, which hcs 
some remarkable resemblances to that of Greece and surpasses it in beauty 
in certain passages, and which was, like it, the work of centuries, can, along 
with the Vedas, throw some light on the origin of many beliefs and symbols in 
vogue among the populations of Greece, Italy, and Northern Europe. Delhi 
was the scene of the chief events of the Mahabharata, whose heroes do not 
leave the Ganges valley. The Ramayana, another epic poem, bears on 
the Aryan conquest of the peninsula and the Island of Ceylon, where Rama 
of the divine bow introduced the Vedic religion. This time it was one 
man, Valmiki, who narrated in forty-eight thousand verses the exploits of 
his hero. For the brilliancy and grandeur of his descriptions and the 
penetrating grace of his poetry, he ought to be classed with Vergil and 
Homer, 

History of India. — ^This poetic and religious race has, unfortunately, 
recorded little of its history but that of its gods. Darius's conquest of 
the countries situated along the right bank of the Indus conveyed no kno\\ 1- 
edge of Gangetic India to Herodotus. On its left bank Alexander found a 
large number of kings, such as Taxylus Abyssarus and the two Poruses, and 
independent peoples like the Mallians, the Oxydrachi, etc. He wanted to 
go as far as Patna, the capital of the great Prasian empire, at the confluence 
of the Djumna and the Ganges; but a sedition of his soldiers stopped him 
at the Hyphasus. An Indian of low birth, Chandragupta, drove out the 
governors left by the Macedonian hero in the Punjaub, overthrew the 
empire of the Prasians, and received ambassadors from Seleucus Nicator. 
Another conqueror, cotemporary with Caesar, Vicramaditya, reigned also 
over a large part of the Indian peninsula and welcomed to his brilliant 
court Kalidassa, the most famous of India's dramatic poets, the author of 
the charming poem called Sakuntala. The Greek kings of Bactriana 
possessed a part of the Indus valley, and there we find their medals. Later 
on somewhat regular commercial relations were entered into between 
Egypt and the Indian peninsula, where Roman merchants established 
agencies. Every year they carried thither over four million dollars in 
specie to purchase silk, pearls, perfumes, ivory, spices, etc., so that there 
had already set in that drain on the precious metals made by India at the 
expense of the rest of the world, accumulating so much wealth in the hands 
of its princes. These treasures tempted the Mussulmans of Persia. In 
the beginning of the eleventh century a Turkish chieftain, the Ghaznevide 



Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 401 

Mahmud, disturbed that inoffensive population with his iconoclastic rage, 
his cupidity and his religion, which in time became that of a very large 
number of Hindus. The Turks were succeeded by the Mongols, whose 
emperors reigned at Delhi until the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
and are known as Grand Moguls. The last of these was Aurung Zeb 
(1658- 1707), a cruel, capricious tyrant. After his death there was civil 
ar between his sons and dismemberment of the empire into many frag- 
ments, the Hindus in many places regaining their independence. In 1738 
the Shah of Persia invaded India to avenge an alleged insult, captured 
Delhi, gave the city over to the mercy of his terrible followerc, slew, it is said, 
more than a hundred thousand of the inhabitants, and carried off enormous 
plunder. The former empire, then, was fast going to decay when Europeans 
began their struggle for it. 

The Brahmans and the Caste System. — Before recording this 
struggle, let us take a glance at Hindu life. The race had lost its independ- 
ence, but had retained, and still retains, its social organization, religion and 
literature. The great god Brahma, the sacred books tell us, divided the 
people into four castes, namely, the Brahmans or priests, who sprang from 
his head; the Xatryas or warriors, springing from his arms; the Vaissyas or 
laborers and traders, from his loins; and the Sudras or artisans, from his 
feet. The first three castes, those of the Regenerate, who represent the 
conquering Aryas, are the dominant classes; they are forbidden to intermarry 
with the fourth caste, descendants of the aborigmes, that is, of the van- 
quished. Children born of these unions and all violators of the religious 
laws are the Pariahs or impure, who cannot dwell in the cities, bathe in the 
Ganges, or read the Vedas: contact with them is an impurity. The Brah- 
mans alone had the right to read and explain the sacred writings, the 
revealed book; and as all knowledge and wisdom were contained in it, they 
were at one and the same time priests, physicians, judges, poets, etc. As 
interpreters of the will of heaven, they reigned through religious terror; 
accordingly they had succeeded in binding the rajahs or kings, chosen from 
the warrior class, with the many bonds of a ceremonial which the laws of 
Manu have handed down to us. It was not without terrible struggles that 
the Xatryas submitted to the supremacy of the priests, and legends have 
preserved their memory. The final triumph of the Brahmans appears to 
have been complete only after the ninth century B. C. India then received 
the organization which it still retains in its chief traits and which we find in 
the book called the Laws of Manu, the last revision of which, certainly 
prior to the Buddhist reform (sixth century A. D. ), refers the origin of this 
religious, political and civil code to a very remote antiquity. The religious 

26 



402 Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 

system bears some resemblance to that of the ancient Persians (Mazdeism). 
Buddhism, founded by Czakyamuni, surnamed Buddha (the Wise), was a 
protest against this the most powerful theocracy the world has ever known, 
as well as against the caste system. The popular heresy, as we might call 
it, in time won so many recruits that the Brahmans became alarmed and 
by violent persecution drove it from the country. In a corrupted form it 
won Burmah and Thibet, which has remained its chief seat to the present 
day and from which it spread into China. We see, then, that, if the Hindus 
have done little, they have thought much. Besides, they covered India 
with imposing monuments of rare elegance, so that they can boast of three 
of the glories of Greece, thought, poetry and art. 

India Ready for a Change of Masters. — They also resembled the 
Hellenes in another respect, lack of political unity. When the Mongol 
domination fell to pieces two centuries ago, it was succeeded by a multitude 
of rajahs, nabobs and nizams, each arrogating to himself an independence 
continually disturbed by the mutual rivalries of these potentates and the 
internal quarrels of which each petty State was the scene. To intervene, 
get paid for his aid, and gain a foothold in the native States, was the policy 
of the governor of the French posts. He applied it especially when the 
nabob of the Carnatic was defeated and slain during an irruption of the 
warlike tribe of the Mahrattas (1740). He gave shelter to the prince's 
widow, son and son-in-law, Chunda Sahib, restored them to power, and 
received in reward the title of nabob, along with the right to coin money and 
the disposal of a body of forty-five hundred men, equipped and supported at 
the expense of the court of Delhi. The French establishments in India 
were soon on the way to full prosperity and were sending home enormous 
quantities of commerce. It was then (1741), that Dupleix after a long 
experience in India, became governor-general of the French posts, with 
residence at Pondichery. He at once planned interference in the native 
quarrels, sought to take rank in the hierarchy of the local dynasties, and to 
make territorial conquests. But Louis XV did not approve of traders 
becoming warriors and acting as sovereigns; whence an opposition that 
afterwards led to Dupleix's fall. Had the second and third Georges been 
so punctilious, India might have had a different subsequent history. When 
war broke out between France and England (1744), the governor of the 
French islands in the Indian Ocean was sent with a fleet to Pondichery 
bearing ministerial instructions very different from the governor general's 
views (1746). 

France and England at War in India. — These instructions forbade 
Dupleix to acquire any territory and limited his action to destroying the 



Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 403 

English establishments, while he was planning to keep them. The capture 
of Madras brought on the clash that anyone might have foreseen (1746). 
The naval commander, who was seeking only money, had promised to 
restore Madras to the English for a large ransom; but Dupleix made the 
Pondichery council annul the agreement and announced his intention to 
remain master of the place. After an exchange of bitter recriminations 
between the two governors whom the ministry's and the company's lack of 
foresight had intrusted with almost equal powers, the naval officer set out 
for his islands, found himself superseded there, started for France, was 
captured on his way home by the English, and learning that he had been the 
object of most unjust attacks, obtained leave from them to go to Paris to 
defend himself. There he found only close captivity, which lasted for 
three years (1748-51). He was at last acquitted; but, overwhelmed wath 
grief and ruined, he died in wretchedness (1753). He was not guilty of 
having wished to follow unfortunate instructions to the letter, no more than 
was Dupleix of having wished to spare his country an error well calculated 
to ruin his and its prestige with the natives; but from their bitter dispute 
there remained in many minds an impression of systematic distrust of the 
acts of France's representatives in the Far East. Men were led to believe 
that their plans were chimerical and their ultimate designs entirely personal 
Dupleix, retaining Madras, had to defend it against the nabob of the Carna- 
tic. That prince was beaten at San Thome (November, 1746), a memora- 
ble event because it exposed for the first time the small value of the innum- 
erable armies of those Hindu princes and their inability to stand against a 
mere handful of European soldiers. Dupleix was afterwards driven back 
from Fort St. David, near Madras, and then besieged in Pondichery (1748) 
by Admiral Boscawen, aided by the Carnatic prince and twelve hundred 
Dutch; but he compelled his adversaries to raise the siege. France's 
success in India, however, served only to compensate for its reverses in 
America. By the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle Madras was restored to the 
English and Cape Breton to the French. 

Further Conquests by Dupleix. — Peace having been restored with 
England, Dupleix continued to carry out his vast schemes. In the Carnatic 
the rulership was disputed by two claimants, and a like state of affairs 
existed in the nizamship of the Dekkan, one claimant in each being pro- 
English. Dupleix took the other side, sent brave officers to support the 
anti-English, and procured victory for them. The nabob of the Carnatic 
ceded Mazulipatam to him and enlarged the territories of Karikal and 
Pondichery, against which an immense Dekkanese army then marched. 
For a moment the cause of Dupleix and his allies seemed lost, but he had 



404 Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 

many friends in the enemies* camp, from which many desertions took place. 
Personal bravery on the part of French officers did the rest; the great army 
was scattered, its leader slain, and his rival proclaimed as nizam (December, 
1750). He went to celebrate his triumph at Pondichery, and paid for 
Dupleix's aid by ceding to him the whole southeastern coact of India from 
the mouth of the Kistna to Cape Comorin. Soon afterwards the new nizam 
perished in a riot as he was entering his capital; but the French accompany- 
ing him at once put his nephew in power and remained in Hyderabad to 
protect him*. He rewarded their services by ceding to Dupleix (1751) the 
Circars from the Kistna to Mahanaddy. That was the highest point of 
French power in India. And that power was very fragile; the French 
agents and the princes supporting them were beset by desertion and treason; 
France really occupied in India only the territory occupied by its soldiers, 
and those soldiers were only a handful. A robust effort on the part of the 
mother country was necessary to establish on a firm basis the empire which 
Dupleix wished to give it; but this neither the company nor the government 
would make. Looking only from the mercantile point of view, they did not 
understand the utility of those conquests; on the contrary, they even censured 
them openly. They did not want, they said, "to become a political power 
in India; we want only a few small establishments to aid and protect com- 
merce; no acts of violence, no conquests, much merchandise, and some 
increase in dividends." 

Dupleix Defeated by Clive and Recalled. — If such was the impres- 
sion in France on hearing of Dupleix's successes, one may easily surmise 
what it must have been when the knell of reverses sounded. And this was 
soon heard. Robert Clive, the real founder of England's Indian empire, 
had gathered together some hundreds of Europeans and Sepoys, with whom 
he went to the aid of a Mohammedan Adventurer, Mehemet Ali, in the 
Carnatic. He captured Arcot its capital (1751), then, hemmed in himself 
in his conquest, freed himself by a heroic resistance, made the small French 
and native army commanded by Law capitulate near Trichinopoly, freed 
that city, in which Mehemet Ali was besieged, proclaimed that prince, and 
had his rival put to death (1752). These reverses could have been, and 
came near being, repaired. Dupleix raised up another pretender in the 
Carnatic, and obtained a signal advantage near Trichinopoly (February, 
1754). But the effect produced in France was terrible when the company 
learned that, in spite of its repeated instructions, war was continued and 
especially that it was unsuccessful. To rob the English of a pretext for 
aggression and at the same time the shareholders of a cause for discontent, 
it had been decided to send a special commissioner to India to make 



Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 405 

peace between the two companies. Exceeding his instructions, he ordered 
Dupleix to leave for home (October 14, 1754); and yet, on the receipt of 
better news from India, fresh instructions, more favorable to the governor, 
had been sent, but arrived too late. To this error the governor added that 
of hastily concluding a humiliating treaty of peace (at Madras, December 
26, 1754) which sacrificed all of Dupleix's acquisitions and placed both 
companies where they stood in 1748, with prohibition to interfere 
thereafter in the quarrels of the Hindu princes. During these six years the 
English company had acquired only a few square leagues of territory. It is 
doubtful, says the English historian, Mill, if any nation ever made greater 
sacrifices to maintain peace than France made on that occasion. Public 
opinion, it must be said, far from appreciated its seriousness. It was 
indifferent, and even somewhat skeptical and ironical, towards that governor 
transformed into a nabob. It was as indifferent to affairs in India as it 
was anxious about those in North America. Yet Dupleix was very favor- 
ably received on his return to France. He was ennobled in 1756. His 
personal misfortunes, so lamentable that he died (1763) in the direst poverty 
and on eve of being imprisoned for debt, began only a little later, with the 
great lawsuit he had to bring against the Indies company to recover large 
sums he had advanced out of his private means. He was unable to obtain 
justice, and died in despair. The hour of reparation came, but too late for 
him. It was only in 1776 that the Council of State awarded the payment 
of his claims to his heirs. Public opinion, so indifferent or so severe while 
he lived, afterwards became decidedly favorable to him, and he is now 
umversally regarded as a great man whose genius was deplorably misunder- 
stood. 

France Loses India. — Dupleix's departure left the field in India free 
to Clive, who achieved the first great conquest which the English company 
had made, just as the French company was giving up its acquisitions. The 
nabob of Bengal, Surajah Dowlah, a bloodthirsty tyrant, destroyed the 
English establishment of Fort William, reproaching the English for fortify- 
ing it in violation of the treaties; and one hundred and forty-six prisoners 
whom he had captured were by his orders huddled in a frightful narrow 
dungeon (the Black Hole of Calcutta) to spend a whole night there in the 
torrid climate of Bengal (1756) When that infected cell was opened next 
morning, only twenty-six of the unfortunate inmates still retained a spark 
of life. Clive resolved to take striking revenge for this terrible tragedy. 
He set out from Madras, forced the nabob to humble himself, to promise 
not to join the French, and to pay an indemnity. At the same time he took 
Chandernagore from the French (March, 1757). Then, having won the 



4o6 Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 

support of some of Suiajah Dowlah's ministers, he attacked him at Plassey 
(June 23, 1757), where he routed an army eighteen times as numerous as 
his own. While attempting to make his escape, the tyrant was captured 
and put to death. The English set up a new nabob, who had only nominal 
authority and had to pay enormous sums to the victors, especially to Clive. 
It was by applying this system that the English were gradually to succeed 
in gaining possession, directly or indirectly, of the immense peninsula. 
Clive's victory at Plassey was the starting point of that century at whose 
expiration, according to the false prophecy put in circulation by the Brah- 
mans (one of the causes of the great uprising, the Mutiny of 1857), ^^^ English 
were to be driven from India. As subordinate of the nabob, Clive caused 
orders to be given to himself to destroy the Dutch city of Chinsurah on the 
Ganges. He defeated seven vessels and fifteen hundred men sent from Java, 
and carried out his mission. 

Meanwhile a new governor had been sent to Pondichery. He was 
the Irishman Lally-Tollendal, a man of heroic courage, as he had proved 
with the Irish Brigade at Fontenoy, but wholly devoid of the tact and 
ability necessary for an administrator and a diplomat. He by no means 
thought of reviving Dupleix's vast plans, and so proved from the moment 
of his arrival by ordering Bussy, whom he did not like, to leave the Dek- 
kan, thus abandoning that country to the influences hostile to France. 
His only object was the destruction of the English establishments. He 
had only contempt for the natives ; nor did he look any more favorably 
on the personnel of the company, against which he was imbued with fre- 
quently justified prejudices predominating among the directors. Ere 
long he had only enemies everywhere. But he met with some success 
in the beginning. He captured Gondelur, Fort St. David and Dcvicotah 
on the Coromandel coast (June, 1758). But he failed in an inopportune 
expedition against the rajah of Tanjaore the following August, and in the 
Dekkan the nizam favorable to the French was supplanted by a friend 
of the English. Lally was yet able to capture Arcot and besiege Madras 
(1759); he was even on the point of assaulting the White or European 
city when his soldiers, unpaid and angry at their general for repressing 
their inclination to drunkenness, refused to act. He had to retreat. Again 
abandoned by the naval force from the island colonies, and defeated by 
Sir Eyre Coote at Wandewash (January 22, 1760), Lally-Tolendal was 
soon besieged in Pondichery by both land and sea, and famine at last 
compelled him to capitulate (January 15, 1761). Pondichery was sacked 
and destroyed, and Lally was brought as a prisoner to England. He 
had aroused such anger against himself that one of his companions in 
captivity attempted to assassinate him. When notified that he had beer: 



Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 407 

accused in France of high treason, he obtained from the English permis- 
sion to go and defend himself. He was cast into the Bastile, which he 
was to leave again only to ascend the scaffold (1766). His trial before 
the parliament of Paris is one of the saddest monuments of the criminal 
levity with which the so called justice of that time made a plaything of 
human life. Lally had made mistakes, but no one had reproached him 
with any crime. The unjust judgment that had condemned him was 
reversed in 1778 by a decree of the Council; but his son was never to suc- 
ceed, in spite of the support of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, in obtain- 
ing the rehabilitation of his memory from another parliament. 

France in the New World. — ^Though Carrier had discovered the 
St. Lawrence in 1534, and Roberval had been sent out a few years later 
as head of a colony, yet no serious effort at colonization was made until 
after the close of the wars of religion. The settlement of Acadia was 
begun by De Monts at Port Royal in 1604, and at Quebec in 1608 Champ- 
lain laid the foundations of Canada. Colonial growth in both instances 
was slow, and its progress, especially in the case of the former, violently 
interrupted. It was in the West Indies that France had its first really 
prosperous colonies, and these it had acquired from Spain through the 
seventeenth century wars. From the time of Colbert the colonial ques- 
tion was on the order of the day in France. The Dutch had supplanted 
the Spaniards and the Portuguese in the development of wealth beyond 
sea; France and England were ready, in the beginning of the eighteenth 
century, to dispute with each other the succession to the Dutch. At first 
it seemed as if France would gain the upper hand. After the great wars 
of the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV, a period of unheard of prosper- 
ity opened for most of the transmarine establishments. The French 
Antilles especially, Guadeloupe, Martinique, San Domingo, Dominica, 
Santa Lucia, Tabago, etc., shone with great splendor; relieved in 171 7 
of most of the restrictions of the Colbert system, freed from the monopoly 
of the companies, and enriched by the introduction of sugar and coffee, 
they attained splendid development. In San Domingo, from 1701 to 
1704, the population increased tenfold; the number of negroes rose from 
twenty to two hundred and thirty thousand; no colony in the world could 
be compared with that magnificent island, which, even after the reverses 
of the Seven Years' war, still furnished France with a colonial commerce 
considerably superior to that of all the other nations, England not excepted. 
Martinique, which had sixteen thousand negroes in 1701, had sixty thou- 
sand fifty years later, Guadeloupe fifty instead of eight thousand. The 
returns from the French Antilles reached at least thirty million dollars, 



4o8 Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 

far exceeding the traffic of the British Antilles, less populous and not so 
well cultivated. Better adapted to managing plantations and specula- 
ing in sugar than to succeeding in the works that above all require per- 
severance, parsimony and physical toil, the French were less successful 
on the American continent. Louisiana, where settlement had been begun 
at the beginning of the eighteenth century, had remained almost deserted 
since the collapse of the gigantic hopes entertained at the time of Law's 
system, and Canada was peopled slowly. It rather attracted, which was 
a great misfortune, forest rangers, hunters and trappers than tillers of 
the soil and traders. But progress was continuous; from twenty or thirty 
thousand inhabitants at the time of the treaty of Utrecht the population 
of Canada progressively reached eighty thousand at the beginning of the 
Seven Years' War. A chain of posts along the Ohio valley connected 
the vast spaces of Canada with those of Louisiana; from the mouth of 
the St. Lawrence to that of the Mississippi a most magificent domain seemed 
reserved for French activity. 

The Franco-English Conflict in America. — ^While France was 
sacrificing its future in India with the hope of maintaining peace, that 
peace had, however, become strangely precarious. Really, indeed, war 
had never ceased in the Ohio valley, where the English and the French 
colonists, much more bitter against each other than the parent govern- 
ments, came into immediate contact. Boundaries were somewhat vague 
in those vast solitudes, and the English naturally interpreted treaties and 
concessions in such a way as to furnish pretexts for the most liberal claims. 
The boundaries of Acadia, ill defined in the treaties of 1713 and 1748, and 
the possession of Tabago island were also subjects for incessant discus- 
sion. While the commissioners of both governments were discussing 
in Europe, the American planters deemed it simpler for themselves to seize 
disputed territories. In 1753, when the French had built Fort Duquesne 
( now Pittsburg) at the confluence of the Allegheny and the Monongahela 
(head of the Ohio), an expedition was organized in Virginia to drive them 
away; but the Virginians, among whom was a young surveyor named 
George Washington, were themselves surrounded and compelled to lay 
down their arms. In 1754 the English in their turn built Fort Necessity, 
on the Monongahela; a French officer, Jumonville, who had come to 
summon them to evacuate that fort, was treacherously murdered, in spite 
of his mission as an envoy. His brother, De Villiers, avenged his death 
and made Fort Necessity capitulate (July, 1754). These events caused 
bitter indignation in France, while in England the American colonists 
were reproached only with not having succeeded. On November 25 



Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 409 

of the same year very aggressive instructions were sent to the governors 
of the various English colonies, instructions which, in fact, contained an 
elaborate plan for the invasion of Canada. General Braddock, sent 
out from England to Virginia, who took it upon himself to carry this plan 
into execution, marched against Fort Duquesne; but, before being able 
to reach the place, he was defeated and slain (July 9, 1755). On his 
person was found the text of the British government's instructions, which 
were equivalent to a declaration of war. On June 8 preceding this battl ; 
Admiral Boscawen had captured two French war vessels. Louis XV's 
government, however, persisted in negotiating and in prolonging useless 
parleyings, while the English not only offered it no reparation, but even 
affected to have been offended and demanded reparation from France. 
When at last the same Boscawen, treating the French flag with a high 
hand on every sea, had in a month's time (November, 1755) captured 
three hundred merchant vessels, six thousand sailors and six million dol- 
lars' worth of merchandise, it became clearly necessary to acknowledge 
that war was inevitable, or, to be more correct, that it had already been 
begun. In January, 1756, Louis XV decided to declare it. He called 
the various sovereigns of Europe to witness to England's unqualified per- 
fidy and violence, and to every impartial mind clearly demonstrated the 
justice of his cause. 

The English Conquest of Canada. — But the right of the stronger 
was once more to gain the upper hand; and no doubt it was better for 
Canada that it came to be so, as it certainly has been better for the world, 
for out of that aggression came a movement that created a new nation, 
the first nation to have really free institutions, and whose example has 
revolutionized government almost everywhere. The eighty thousand 
French Canadians, poorly supplied with provisions and munitions of 
war, and separated from the mother country by the English fleets con- 
trolling the sea, must, sooner or later, necessarily succumb. In addi- 
tion to France's naval inferiority, its finances were in terrible disorder; 
and the comparatively small resources then at its disposal were to be 
wasted in favor of Austria. Yet as in Europe, so in America the war 
began with French victories. The marquis of Montcalm, to whom was 
entrusted the chief command in Canada, was more frequently hampered 
than helped by the governor of the province, Vaudreuil, and his colleague 
as intendant. Bigot. Yet in 1756 he took from the English Fort Oswego, 
south of Lake Ontario, and the following year he made Fort William 
Henry, on the Lake of the Blessed Sacrament (Lake George), capitulate. 
There was an outburst of indignation in England on receipt of the news 



4IO Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 

of these repeated defeats, but they were the last. In July, 1757, the king 
was compelled to recall Pitt to the ministry of war, and thereafter mili- 
tary measures were pushed with a vigor and confidence that won for Eng- 
land a long series of triumphs. 

Canada was reduced to about thirteen thousand defenders, com- 
prising even the Indians on whom it might depend, and it had nothing 
to hope for from the mother country. Marshal Belle-Isle, in a famous 
letter of 1759, so notified Montcalm in unmistakable terms. The English 
had at their disposal twenty-two thousand regulars and twenty-eight 
thousand militia, to whom Pitt repeatedly sent reinforcements. A three- 
fold attack was decided upon for 1758, but that of the centre failed. Mont- 
calm, who had strongly intrenched himself at Ticonderoga, there repelled 
an attack by Abercrombie (July 8, 1758), though having only one man 
to three; but in the east Boscawen and Amherst captured Cape Breton, 
in spite of a heroic defence by Governor Drucourt and his wife, and Canada 
was thereafter besieged on all sides. In the west Forbes and Washing- 
ton seized Fort Duquesne and called it Fort Pitt (Pittsburg). In 1759 
Prideaux perished in an attack on Fort Niagara, and Amherst was still 
held in check in the centre, but Wolf ascended the St. Lawrence and 
appeared before Quebec. After having for a long time sought a landing 
place in vain, he at last succeeded in finding one from which he could 
scale the Heights of Abraham. While hurrying to repel him Montcalm 
was defeated and slain (battle of the Plains of Abraham, September 13, 
1759). Wolf, who had also been mortally wounded in that encounter, 
had at least the consolation of learning before he died that his men had 
been victorious. The remnants of the French army, under Bougainville, 
withdrew towards Montreal. Quebec capitulated five days later. Bou- 
gainville, Levis and Vaudreuil held out for another year, and even came 
near recovering Quebec. Levis was victorious on the very site of Mont- 
calm's defeat (April 28, 1760), and besieged the town; but the reinforce- 
ments which the enemy received soon compelled him to retreat, and even 
Montral succumbed (September 8, 1760). The English had no other 
pledge to make than that of leaving to the inhabitants of Canada the free 
exercise of the Catholic religion and the enjoyment of their property. 
France lost all its possessions in North America east of the Mississippi 
except the island on which New Orleans stands, and even that and Lou- 
isiana were soon ceded to Spain. Besides Canada and India, many 
other colonies succumbed. In the West Indies it retained only San Do- 
mmgo, but it recovered other islands later on. 

English Maritime Discoveries— Captain Cook. — ^The zeal which 



Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 411 

England applied to winning the empire of the seas was manifested also 
by undertakings more praiseworthy than the acts of violence and piracy 
which it had been practising towards the rival nations. It meant to reach 
out for discoveries on the yet unexplored oceans, for lands still unknown. 
"Nothing," said the British government's instructions to Commodore 
Byron in 1764, "is better calculated to elevate the glory of a nation among 
the maritime powers than to make discoveries in nev/ regions." England, 
in fact, reaped much glory from the explorations of its seamen in the 
Ocean; it is to them that one of its chief colonies, Australia, owes its origin. 
Between 1740 and 1743 Anson had already sailed around the earth; but 
the treaty of Paris gave the signal for great scientific explorations. In 
1764 Commodore Byron was sent in search of the "southern continent" 
which the geographical theories of that time supposed to exist in the higher 
latitudes towards the South Pole as a necessary counterpoise to the masses 
of land situated around the northern polar region. He succeeded only 
in circumscribing the Falkland Islands (first discovered by Davis in 1592) 
and making out a fairly accurate hydrography of the Straits of Magellan. 
In 1766-7 Wallis and Carteret discovered Tahiti, the Tonga and the 
Solomon Islands, and New Ireland, northeast of New Guinea. 

Much more important voyages were those of Captain Cook. On 
his first expedition (1768-71) the famous seaman, after having turned 
Cape Horn and reached Tahiti, where he observed the passage of the 
planet Venus across the sun's disc, steered towards the south, sought 
the austral continent in vain, and in October, 1769, arrived at the eastern 
coast of New Zealand, seen by no European since the incomplete obser- 
vation of Tasman more than a century before. Cook explored that arch- 
ipelago, passed through the strait which still retains his name, circum- 
navigated the whole group, and proved that in those regions there was 
no real continent, but only an archipelago of moderate extent. From 
New Zealand he went west, and in April, 1770, reached the eastern coast 
of Australia, at an inlet which he called Botany Bay, on account of the 
wholly new flora he saw there. He sailed along the dangerous coast of 
that quasi-continent, passed through Torres Strait, and returned to Europe 
by rounding the Cape of Good Hope. 

Cook's Last Voyages — French Explorations. — This voyage had 
already shaken belief in a southern continent; Cook's second expedition 
(1772-5) destroyed it altogether. For three years he launched towards 
the high southern latitudes, in the longitude of the Cape, Tahiti, and 
Terra del Fuego. In 1774 he reached the extreme point of his explora- 
tions towards the south, 71° 10', where he was stopped by the ice floe. 



412 Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 

In the interval between his bold ventures southward, he returned towards 
milder climates, traversed the labyrinth of the ocean islands, explored the 
Marquesas, Tonga or Friendly, New Hebrides, and New Caledonia, 
which he descried in 1774. It was proven that no southern continent 
existed, at least on this side of the Antarctic Circle,and the immensity 
of the South Pacific Ocean was revealed. The object of Cook's third 
voyage (1776-9) was the discovery of the Northwest Passage. He doubled 
the Cape of Good Hope, touched on Van Diemen's Land and New Zea- 
land, and in 1778 reached the Sandwich Islands, which no European 
had yet seen. Thence he went along the coast of North America, passed 
through Behring Strait, and tried to advance along the American main- 
land so as to find the northwest passage, but was almost immediately 
stopped by the ice at a point which he called Icy Cape. He returned to 
winter in the Sandwich Islands, and there met his death at the hands 
of a native during a quarrel which he wished to appease (February, 1799). 
An intrepid seaman, he was at the same time an observer and a scholar 
of the first order, who left little to be done by his successors in the cartog- 
raphy of the Great Ocean. It is to him that England owes its knowl- 
edge of Australia, where it was soon (1788) to lay the humble and un- 
promising foundations (a penal colony) of an establishment for which 
a magnificent destiny was in store. 

France can present no name as glorious as that of Captain Cook; 
yet Bougainville, La Perouse, and D' Entrecasteaux also acquired a cer- 
tain celebrity. Bougainville (1766-9) followed Wallis, but preceded 
Cook, in exploring Tahiti, which he called Nouvelle Cythere, saw the 
Samoan or Navigator Islands, the Great Cyclades, for which the name 
New Hebrides, given by Cook, has prevailed, and the Louisiade, so named 
in honor of Louis XV. The count of La Perouse was entrusted with 
exploring the coasts of the Asiatic continent between Nipon and the Sea 
of Okhotsk, of which very little was still known. Setting out from Brest 
in 1785, he first explored the northwest coast of North America, then 
went to reconnoitre that of Manchuria, descried Sakhalien Island, passed 
through the strait between it and Yeso which has retained his name, and 
then steered towards the great archipelagoes of the Pacific. From Botany 
Bay in 1788 he wrote a letter to the minister of marine. It was the last 
time news was received from him. Many expeditions, and especially 
that of D' Entrecasteaux, were sent out to find traces of him, but to no 
avail. It was only in 1826 that the wrecks of the two ships he had com- 
manded were discovered near the small islands of Vanikoro, in the New 
Hebrides. 

England Becomes a Power in India. — The treaty of Paris did. 



Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 413 

not stop England's progress. If its thirteen original colonies in America 
were soon to enter upon that series of troubles which would end in vio- 
lent separation from the mother country, this loss was to be amply com- 
pensated by the conquests which it continued to make in the Far East, 
but it was also to be an incalculable gain to liberty not only in North 
America, but indirectly to England itself and other parts of the world. 

After having securely established a nabob in Bengal by defending 
him against the neighboring potentates, Clive had returned to Europe 
in 1760 to regain his impaired health. In his absence terrible abuses 
were introduced into the administration of the company. Its agents 
laid the weight of a frightful oppression on the natives, trafficked on their 
own account, openly pillaged the country and the company's treasury, 
secured monopolies, and extorted rich presents. So as to obtain fresh 
subsidies, they dethroned the nabob and sold his succession to his son- 
in-law, whom they supported as long as he satisfied their greed. When 
he grew weary of their exactions and showed a disposition to resist, the 
Enghsh overthrew him and recalled his father-in-law. The proscribed 
sovereign had at his disposal a still numerous army and some European 
adventurers led by a Swiss. He then sought refuge with the nabob of 
Oude and resolved to resist. It was with some difficulty that the Eng- 
lish were victorious at Geriah, Patna and Buxar, but this last action was 
decisive (October, 1764); it left Bengal at their discretion. The English 
had now nothing to fear but their own disorders and the sort of decom- 
position into which the company had gradually fallen. It was then the 
British Government decided to send Clive back to Calcutta (1765). Pro- 
vided with discretionary powers, he reaped the fruit of the victories won 
in his absence. He let the son of his former nabob reign, but in appear- 
ance only, for he strictly limited his powers to a mere vain show; the company 
took over the administration of all his revenues and left him only a very 
moderate pension. Oude was invaded, its nabob had to pay a war indem- 
nity and restore to the now merely nominal Grand Mogul two provinces 
which it had taken from him, while he had to confirm all the concessions 
of territory made by his vassals to the English, and to concede to the com- 
pany the Dewani or financial administration and collecting of the revenues 
of Bengal, Behar and Orissa. Thus did the English company enter 
into the number of the powers of India, among those feudatories of the 
Mongol empire now reduced to a mere shadow of suzerainty. Clive 
forbade the company's agents to engage in any private traffic or to receive 
presents, but thought he should, seeing how moderate were their stipends, 
maintain the monopoly of salt, betel and tobacco. Then he returned 
to England (1766), after having come to reform and staid to steal, loaded 



414 Beginnings of England's Colonial Empire 

with the maledictions of those who reproached him with having repressed 
their abuses and of those who accused him of having well feathered his 
own nest. Raised to the Irish peerage, he was, moreover, held in dis- 
dain by the British aristocracy because of his humble origin. He was 
furiously assailed in Parliament. But his enemies' bitterness could not 
win against him. It was proven in the Commons that he had received 
much money unlawfully, but he was excused on account of his great ser- 
vices to his country. In spite of this favorable outcome of the debates, 
Clive fell into deep melancholy and at last committed suicide. In his 
monopolies he had left a sad legacy to India. Failure of the rice crop 
was followed by a terrible famine (1770), because the English monopolists 
charged exorbitant prices for food supplies. In 1772 Warren Hastings 
succeeded Clive as governor of Bengal and became governor-general 
of India two years later. While he was enlarging his empire, greater 
events were happening elsewhere, 



CHAPTER XXVI 



Birth of the United States 



State of the Original English Colonies. — France's great error was, 
as we have seen, that it did not give sufficient attention to the defence of 
its fine colonial empire, forgetting the covetousness and jealousy that it 
must necessarily arouse. To rob France of preponderance on the sea was a 
question of life and death to England. From the time of Cromwell, nay, 
even from that of EHzabeth, England had become conscious of its destiny; 
it knew where its future lay. In 1688, and then for good in 1714, it had 
taken to itself a dynasty animated with the same passions. Yet for a 
quarter of a century (i 715-1740) it had let its resentment slumber; but 
when this awoke again its national passions were only the more furious on 
that account; they imperiously demanded war against France and the 
destruction of France's colonies. Its own had remained unmolested before 
the war of the League of Augsburg, when New England and New York 
were attackeM from Canada. Situated much less advantageously than 
France in the Antilles, where its only important establishments were 
Jamaica and Barbados, England had acquired a much better position on 
the American continent, with its thirteen colonies, all but one founded 
during the seventeenth century by Anglican adventurers and persecuted 
Puritans, Catholics and Quakers. These colonies, at the time we have 
reached in our narrative, were already prosperous and comparatively 
populous. But the population was small for so large an extent of terri- 
tory, and yet the colonists already felt they were too closely hemmed in. 
Confined to that long strip of land extending between the Atlantic and 
the Alleghanies, they felt the need of expanding towards the interior, to- 
wards those immense plains of the Ohio and the Mississippi in which from 
that time they seemed to foresee the splendid field reserved for their ac- 
tivity; and they could expand thither only by breaking through the cir- 
cle drawn around them in the form of the French posts and settlements. 
Canada, which also embarrassed them, had already been circumscribed by 
England's acquisition of Acadia (1713) and the Hudson Bay territories. 
The French New World, vaster but less compact, was a tempting prey to 

the English colonists overflowing with energy and vitality. 

415 



4i6 Birth of the United States 

In England, towards the close of the sixteenth, and especially in the 
early part of the seventeenth, century, two powerful causes brought abont 
a marked emigration movement, namely, religious dissensions and an 
economic crisis resulting from the general substitution of pasturage for 
tillage, which left many hands idle and forced a considerable portion of the 
surplus population to seek a livelihood abroad. It was on the eastern coast 
of North America, which the Cabots had visited v/ith English ships, that 
England sought to establish the well peopled colonies which were necessary 
to it. Sir Walter Raleigh pointed out the way by sending an expedition in 
1584 to the rich country which, in honor of Queen Elizabeth, he called Vir- 
ginia; but the colony he founded the following year on Roanoke Island was 
a failure, and all he did was to introduce the potato and tobacco into Eng- 
land. Adventurers in search of the precious metals, political offenders, and 
in the course of time tobacco and cotton planters followed in his foot- 
steps, while men of another class, sufferers on account of their religious 
opinions, were to establish commonwealths farther north. 

The Founding of Virginia and New England. — In 1606 a company 
was organized in London and received a royal charter for the colonizing of 
Virginia. Next year the first colonists sailed up a river which they called 
the James in honor of their king, and laid the foundations of their first 
settlement, Jamestown, at or near where a Spanish colony had been founded 
and failed just eighty years before. After rather slow progress, attended 
by many hardships and reverses, including attacks by the aborigines (Indi- 
ans) and the inclination of the first colonists to neglect husbandry for 
seeking gold which did not exist, the colony assumed considerable develop- 
ment, especially after the company's charter was abrogated (1619) and the 
settlement came directly under the crown. It then acquired a written con- 
stitution and two legislative bodies, one of them elected by the planters. 
But in the same year it received its first negro slaves along with politi- 
cal liberty. For nearly two centuries and a half Virginia was a region of 
large landowners, rich planters and slaves. 

Far different were the beginnings of the first northern colonies. It 
was Puritans (Brownists or Separatists) proscribed and persecuted under 
Elizabeth and James I who began the English settlements in New England. 
Weary of their precarious exile in Holland, they sought and obtained per- 
mission from the English government to emigrate to Virginia; but in 
December, 1620, the vessel carrying these Pilgrims, the famous Mayflower, 
reached the New World at a point far from the James, in the bay sheltered 
by the peninsula ending in Cape Cod. There, on board ship, they drew 
up the first constitution written in America, then landed and in the depth 



Birth of the United States 417 

of winter began to build the town of Plymouth. These pious and tolerant 
refugees were soon followed by others. They had great difficulties to 
surmount, but with indomitable energy overcame everything. A few years 
later (1629) other Puritans, who separated from the Church of England 
only after coming to America, founded Massachusetts under the terms of a 
charter which they took special care to carry with them to their new home. 
Thus from the beginning they had complete local self-government, and 
that of a decidedly democratic character, but within strictly drawn lines. 
Their religious legislation was most exclusive and severe, and, unlike the 
Plymouth colony, this theocracy was noted as a bitter persecutor of religious 
dissent from the beginning. Piety was strictly practised within well de- 
fined lines, and education was diffused throughout the whole peopJe. 
Harvard College was founded in 1636, one year after that of the Jesuits 
at Quebec, and the first printing establishment was set up in Boston two 
years later, while Canada remained without one until after the treaty of 
Paris; but Mexico had this agency of civilization a hundred years before 
New England. These measures long maintained among the Puritans 
qualities of morality and temperance v/hich, even from the sole point of 
view of the colony's development, were very valuable. From Massa- 
chusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island developed in 1636, the latter 
being founded by refugees from religious persecution, and in 1638 New 
Hampshire. These four colonies formed the New England group, all 
democratic, Puritan, trading and industrial, in every respect the opposite 
of Virginia. 

Beginnings of the Other English Colonies. — A concession made in 
1632 by Charles I to one of his courtiers who had been a Secretary of State 
under his father. Sir George Calvert, better known by his Irish title of 
Lord Baltimore, led to the founding of Maryland, a vast territory on the 
north side of the Potomac river and on both sides of Chesapeake Bay. The 
original grantee dying before the patent received the royal signature, 
the concession was continued to his eldest son, Cecilius. This colony re- 
ceived the name of Maryland either in honor of the queen, Henrietta Maria, 
a Catholic, or of the mother of the Redeemer, as the Calverts were Catho- 
lics. The colony was begun in 1634, and was the first to furnish religious 
liberty to all Christians. Rhode Island soon outdid it by tolerating even 
non-Christians; but Rhode Island proscribed Catholics in 1661, as even 
Maryland had persecuted them from 1650 to 1658. Less aristocratic 
than the south and less democratic than the north, Maryland was ever to be 
a connecting link between these two extreme regions. The same was the 
case with other central colonies. New York, originally the New Nether- 



27 



4i8 Birth of the United States 

lands and as such including New Jersey and Delaware, was first colonized 
by the Dutch, by whom New York Bay and the Hudson River had been 
explored in 1609. It was seized by England and given to the king's broth- 
er, the duke of York, in 1664, and formally ceded by Holland (treaty 
of Breda) three years later. Almost at the same time New Jersey was 
detached from New York and made a separate colony. Pennsylvania 
owes its name to the famous William Penn, the most distinguished member 
of the Society of Friends, to whom it was granted by Charles H in pay- 
ment of a debt due to his father. Admiral Penn, and to whom Delaware 
was given almost at the same time (1681) by the king's brother, the duke 
of York, afterwards James H. Here rehgious liberty was established 
from the beginning, and here only was it maintained throughout the whol 2 
colonial period. Philadelphia was laid out in 168 1 and colonized the 
following year. Its early population was composed of a great variety 
of elements, English, Welsh, Scotch, Irish, Dutch, French, Germans, 
and grew rapidly. Delaware soon became detached from Pennsylvania, 
"m regard to which it always had its own legislature. In 1663 Charles II 
granted to eight lords, among them his prime minister (Lord Clarendon) 
and General Monk (Lord Albemarle), the territory south of Virginia, 
in his honor called Carolina. For this new colony the famous philoso- 
pher, Locke, drew up a curious constitution, thoroughly oligarchical, 
which would undoubtedly have been a failure had it ever been put in force. 
The eight proprietors had to sell their rights to the crown. In 1721 the 
territory was divided into two governments. North Carolina and South 
Carolina. From the latter a charter of George II in 1732 detached Georgia 
in favor of the philanthropist, James Oglethorpe. The new colony was 
peopled by English debt-prisoners, Protestants from Switzerland and 
Salzburg, Moravian Brethren, and Scotch and Irish Protestants. 

Political Conditions in the Eighteenth Century. — ^The number 
of the colonies, then, was thirteen. About the middle of the eighteenth 
century they constituted an important group of States, with a rapidly 
increasing population of over a million and a half, one-fifth slaves. In 
spite of the variety of customs and laws and differences of origin, many 
common characteristics were to be found in those strongly organized com- 
munities. All had equally a keen sense of their liberty and dignity and 
an earnest desire to turn to account the inexhaustible resources of Amer- 
ica, while they also had but a moderate amount of sympathy for the mother 
countr)'^ which they had had to leave. Strongly impregnated with the ideas 
of self-government, they understood no other form of rule than the par- 
liamentary regime, which they practised everywhere with success. In 



Birth of the United States 419 

each colony, despite local differences, one found the same essential c' ar- 
acteristics, namely, a governor, in some cases elected, but most frequently 
appointed by the crown, and, with only two exceptions, a two-branch 
legislature, the one branch elective, the other in some cases elected and 
in some others appointed, but both always enacting the laws and voting 
the taxes. The colonies were self-administrative and enjoyed almost 
complete autonomy. On one essential point, however, they were kept 
in very close subjection — the mother country had reserved to itself the 
exclusive right of regulating their commerce, of determining their customs 
dues, and of prohibiting their trafficking with other countries than itself 
(Navigation Act of 1651). The Colonial Pact was still in full force; Eng- 
land had the exclusive right to supply its colonies with manufactured 
articles; English ships were alone permitted to do the carrying trade between 
the mother country and the colonies: and England also had the sole priv- 
ilege of receiving commodities coming from them. If America, said 
Lord Chatham himself, should undertake to manufacture a stocking or 
a horse-shoe nail, it would be made to feel the whole of British power. 
No wonder smuggling was highly prosperous. Yet such oppression, 
especially odious to a people in v^hom the mercantile instinct was already 
very highly developed, was borne patiently as long as the colonies had 
not yet acquired the feeling of their own strength, and while the support 
of the mother country was necessary to them for destroying the power 
of France, which hemmed them within an impassable circle. The Amer- 
ican part of the Seven Years' War, which was much more the work of 
the American colonists than of the English themselves, produced a two- 
fold result — it taught the Americans what they could do; and as, since 
the treaty of Paris, Canada no longer belonged to the French nor Florida 
to the Spaniards, the aid of the mother country ceased to be indispen- 
sable to them. Already before the war attentive eyes might discern prob- 
abilities of violent separation of its colonies from England; and already 
in 1750 Turgot regarded it as certain. After the treaty of Paris it became 
evident that the colonists would not much longer endure a union all of 
whose burdens fell upon them and all of whose benefits accrued to Eng- 
land. 

America's Resistance to the Stamp Act. — England was so impru- 
dent as to furnish them with a grievance. Out of the Seven Years' War 
it had come victorious, but exhausted; its public debt had reached the 
enormous figure of one hundred and fifty-six million pounds sterling, 
a heavy burden for a rather thinly peopled country. It thought itself 
justified in making its colonies bear a part of the debt contracted for their 



420 Birth of the United States 

advantage; it deemed it useful also, seeing their rapid progress, to make 
them feel their dependence; and it resolved to impose upon them a por- 
tion of the new taxes made necessary by the increased public expenses' 
while the colonies thought they had contributed more than their share 
to the success of the war. But, as the colonies were not represented in 
the British Parliament, this pretension came in direct conflict with the 
fundamental axiom of representative government which says that no 
taxes are lawful but those to which the people through their representa- 
tives have given their assent. Taxation and representation were insep- 
arable in the estimation of every British citizen, and to this principle the 
Americans professed an even stronger attachment. They had not dis- 
puted with the British Parliament the right to legislate on external taxes, 
but they had never yet borne any internal tax except those which their 
own legislatures had freely voted, and England, moreover, had never 
yet thought of asking others of them. The bill to tax Americans, Robert 
Walpole had said in answer to a proposition of this sort, he would leave 
to those of his successors who had more courage than he, or who would 
be less friendly to commerce than he was. He had old England against 
him; would he also go and provoke the resentment of the New England! 

Bute, under whom, with a corruptly chosen and venal Parliament, 
there was question of the royal prerogative, the duties of subjects and 
the obHgation of obedience, entertained no such scruples, and his suc- 
cessors, Grenville, even went farther. At the latter's bidding, or rather 
at the king's through him. Parliament passed the Stamp Act, compelling 
Americans to use only stamped paper purchased from the British treasury, 
and thus, for a rather meagre return, raised a very serious question of 
principle. America resolved to ofi^er most stubborn resistance. As 
Washington wrote on September 20 of that year, all reflecting colonists 
regarded that unconstitutional system as an odious attack on their liberty, 
and protested loudly against such an exaction. Non-importation agree- 
ments were entered into for the purpose of suspending all trade with Eng- 
land. The legislatures of the various colonies adopted and forv^-arded 
most vigorous protests; that of Massachusetts ordered the people not to 
use stamped paper while that of Virginia reminded the colonists that 
their ancestors had brought from England all the rights of British subjects, 
confirmed in two charters of James I, and in the ardor of patriotism Pat- 
rick Henry exclaimed in that assembly: "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I 
his Cromwell, and George HI may no doubt profit by their exam- 
ple!" Even in England eloquent voices were raised against the minister- 
ial policy. Chatham (Pitt) glorified the resistance of the Americans. 
His country, he said, had no right to tax America. That was contrary 



Birth of the United States 421 

to all the principles of justice and policy, and there was no necessity that 
could justify it. America was obstinate! America was almost in open 
rebellion! He rejoiced at seeing America resist. Three millions of men 
so dead to every feeling of liberty as to accept servitude voluntarily would 
be worthy instruments to enslave all the rest of the king's subjects! Gren- 
ville, attacked from every side, succumbed, and his successor, Rocking- 
ham, repealed the Stamp Act (July, 1766); but in a new measure he upheld 
the principle of the legislative supremacy of the British Parliament over 
the colonies. 

Period of Constitutional Agitation. — In reality this apparent 
concession was no concession at all, and America's resistance continued 
to be as vigorous as in the past. Pitt might perhaps have granted it, 
but now his term in the ministry was brief, and his colleagues belonged 
to the court party. Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was very 
anxious to obtain money from the colonies. North, who succeeded him 
(1767), imposed on them taxes on paper, glass, tea and colors. The 
king applauded this energy. Everybody, he said, felt it was the fatal 
condescension of 1766 that encouraged the Americans to raise their pre- 
tensions so high as to claim absolute independence. The Americans 
persevered in the same tactics — they stopped all importation of English 
merchandise. The whinings of British commerce led the ministry (1769) 
to withdraw all the new taxes except that on tea, which was maintained 
so as to assert distinctly the principle of the mother country's supremacy 
but three years more passed without any attempt being made to collect 
it. The Americans did not take kindly to this prudence; they shared 
the opinion of their fellow-countryman, Dickinson, when he told them 
to put no trust in the moderation of the new dues; for they were adroitly 
calculated to prepare men's necks to endure a collar whose gradually 
increased weight would make them stoop to earth. Ere long North, 
who became prime minister in 1770, a man in the king's confidence, and 
imbued like him with the fatal idea that only a little energy was needed 
to break the opposition of the colonists, resolved to have the tax on tea 
collected, even by force. Three ships of the East Indies Company, loaded 
with tea, reached Boston in 1773; rather than pay the dues, some of the 
inhabitants disguised as Indians boarded the vessels and cast the car- 
goes into the sea. Such was the famous Boston Tea Party. The com- 
modity was no better, though less violently, received in other ports. 

Separatist Movement — Philadelphia Congress. — The Parliament 
answered this challenge by closing the port of Boston, transferring to 



422 Birth of the United States 

Salem the seat of the Massachusetts assembly, and announcing that per- 
sons accused of rebelHon would be taken to England for trial, a fresh 
and perhaps still more serious attack on the rights of American citizens. 
The king declared the die was cast, and the colonies would have to con- 
quer him or submit. And they unhesitatingly accepted the war that 
was offered to them. The Massachusetts assembly called the militia to arms; 
subscriptions were opened everywhere. Wishing before fighting, however, 
to make a last effort with a view to conciliation, the Americans resolved 
on the convening at Philadelphia of a general congress of delegates from 
the various colonies. This congress, in which sat the most illustrious 
citizens of America, such as Washington, Franklin, Patrick Henry, Jeffer- 
son, John Adams, etc., on September 4, 1774, issued a solemn declara- 
tion of rights, based at one and the same time on the immutable laws of 
nature, the principles of the English constitution, the colonial charters 
and positive laws. It approved of the conduct of Massachusetts and 
sent addresses to the king, to the English people (in which unfortunately 
it made grievance of the religious liberty granted to Canada), to the Cana- 
dians and to all the colonies, and before adjourning protested that the 
Americans would never submit to a tax imposed on them without their 
own consent. If their seaports were destroyed, said Gadsden of South 
Carolina, they had trees and clay enough to rebuild them; but if the lib- 
erties of their country were annihilated, where would they find the mater- 
ials with which to restore them .? Chatham said of that famous congress 
that, ardent as was his admiration for the free States of antiquity, he was 
compelled to acknowledge that the congress of the Americans was infer- 
ior to none of the assemblies of which history has handed down the reeord 
to us. One of the most prominent members of the congress, Franklin, 
was sent to England to make a final effort for conciliation; but his mis- 
sion was a complete failure. New elections, manipulated in Walpole 
fashion, further encouraged the decisive majority to make no concession. 
Massachuetts was declared to be in a state of rebellion, fresh troops were 
sent thither, and Franklin, ill received everywhere, had to leave England 
(March 21, 1775). Soon afterwards General Gage, governor of Boston, 
wishing to go and seize a store of arms and munitions at Concord, was 
met by the American militia at Lexington (April 19, 1775), and had to 
return to Boston after having suffered considerable loss and more pres- 
tige. He was blockaded there by the insurgents. On June 17 of the 
same year a fresh conflict took place at Bunker Hill, which was indeci- 
sive as a battle, but which showed the fighting qualities of the Ameri(!:ans. 
War was begun. To maintain it a new congress, held also at Philadelphia 
(May, 1775), decided, after a final appeal to England, to levy volunteers 
and issue paper money; and Washington was made commander-in-chief. 



Birth of the United States 423 

Franklin and Washington — Declaration of Independence. — 

George Washington, born in Virginia in 1732, and a surveyor by pro- 
fession, had first led the Hfe of a hunter and trapper famihar to the young 
men of America in his time, and had then taken a creditable part in the 
French war. Thus had he acquired among his fellow-countrymen a 
renown that won for him universal admiration and increasing authority. 
He had not the gift of eloquence, no brilliant quality, in fact; but his 
strong common sense, his virtue, his disinterestedness, and his patriotism 
naturally pointed him out to attention, and popularity came to him with- 
out his having done anything to court it. The congress could have made 
no better choice than that man indomitable in reverses, disinterested 
in victory, simple and at the same time great, "the Cincinnatus of the 
west, whom envy dared not hate." The other hero of American inde- 
pendence was to be that Benjamin Franklin whom we have already seen 
engaged in the work, and whose memory has but recently been honored 
publicly by the whole world on the occasion of the second centenary of 
his birth. Born in 1706, the fifteenth child of a poor journeyman dyer 
of Boston; in order to earn a livelihood, he first became a tallow-chandler 
and then a printer; but so great was his thirst for knowledge that he stinted 
himself in food so as to have money with which to buy books. At the 
age of seventeen he moved to Philadelphia, and gradually won his way 
into business and literature by dint of order and economy. In the year 
of Washington's birth he published the first issue of his Poor Richard's 
Almanac, whose success v/as phenomenal. In 1759 he invented the 
lightning rod, after having identified lightning with electricity. As early 
as 1754 he had drawn up the plan of a federal constitution for the thir- 
teen colonies. He was the diplomatist of America, as Washington was 
its general; and the new world could not show to the old tvv^o more beau- 
tiful examples of the lines of greatness in which they shone. 

While America was taking up arms, England was completing the 
exasperation of the colonists by declaring them outlaws and by purchas- 
ing to fight them not only the alliance of the Indians, but also the troops 
which the Elector of Hesse made a business of selling to the highest bidder. 
Such proceedings brought to an end the last hesitations which some still 
felt at the idea of separating for ever from the mother country. On July 
4, 1776, Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence drawn up 
by Jefferson, with the aid of Franklin and John Adams. "We hold 
these truths to be self-evident," says this immortal document, "that all 
men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with cer- 
tain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness; that to secure these rights governm.ents are instituted among 



424 Birth of the United States 

men, deriving their just powers from consent of the governed; that when- 
ever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the 
right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new govern- 
ment, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers 
in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and 
happiness." Consequently the Congress abjured the sovereignty of the 
king of Great Britain and declared the colonies free and independent. 

First Period of the War of Independence. — Washington was not 
present at the adoption of that Declaration — he had been sent to take 
charge of the forces besieging the English in Boston. By his successful 
manoeuvring he compelled General Howe, who had succeeded Gage, 
to evacuate Boston by sea early in the following year to withdraw to Hal- 
ifax, carrying with him eleven hundred Massachusetts Loyalists. The 
Americans, thinking the war ended when it had as yet scarcely been begun, 
had, against Washington's advice, sent militia under Montgomery and 
Arnold to produce an uprising in Canada. This expedition was a com- 
plete failure on account of the hostile disposition of the Canadians, who 
were angry at the religious tone of the address of Congress to the English 
people, who were well treated by England, and who still remembered 
their former struggles with the English colonists in America. More- 
over, the Americans were to have enough to do in defending their own 
country. Howe, reinforced and joined by Clinton, who had gone to 
South CaroHna to try to bring about a Loyalist uprising there, landed 
on Long Island, was victorious at Brooklyn Heights (August, 1776), 
captured New York, and compelled Washington to withdraw his militia 
across the Hudson and then across the Delaware. Congress became 
frightened and fled to Baltimore. Poverty, defective discipline and 
desertions were thinning Washington's little army, and the American 
cause seemed lost. So as to save the cause from despair if possible, with 
a mere handful of men Washington, in December, 1776, unexpectedly 
crossed the Delaware on the ice, first defeated the Hessians at Trenton, 
and then attacked and routed the English at Princeton. These victo- 
ries somewhat raised the spirits of the militia, but they were of very little 
military importance. When summer returned Howe resumed the oflFen- 
sive from the head of Chesapeake Bay, defeated Washington at Brandy- 
wine and Germantown (1777), and occupied Philadelphia, which the 
gaycty of the following winter was to make his Capua. All that Wash- 
ington could do vvas to wait patiently and maintain himself in his camp 
at Valley Forge, in spite of the sufferings of his ragged army in intensely 
cold weather, of the jealousy and intriguings of some of his officers, and 



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THE SURRENDER AT YORKTOWN. 
Washington, with the American army, supported by Lafayette and the 
French fleet, laid siege to Yorktown, on the Chesapealse Bay, which Lord 
Cornwallis had held with the British troops. Soon starvation confronted the 
besieged, and the situation of Cornwallis became so desperate that after an 
unsuccessful sally he was forced to surrender. 



Birth of the United States 425 

of the distrust of Congress. Never did he show himself greater than 
during that sad year 1777-8, when it devolved on him alone, so to say, 
to uphold faith in the success of his country's cause and to do his whole 
duty. 

Saratoga and the Policy of France. — His admirable tenacity 
had, meanwhile, been most serviceable to his cause elsewhere. He had 
kept Howe from going to the aid of General Burgoyne, who had under- 
taken to lead an army from Canada to New York. Thus left to himself, 
Burgoyne was continually harassed and weakened. First, a strong 
detachment of his troops was crushed by the Vermonters at Bcnnmgton, 
and an army organized by General Philip Schuyler brought him to a 
standstill at Stillwater, near Saratoga. Defeated a little later near the 
same spot, he was forced to surrender at Saratoga (October 17, 1777) to 
General Gates, who had superseded Schuyler. This victory caused the 
greatest enthusiasm among the patriots. They were justified in this, 
for, if that capitulation, from the military point of view, was but an event 
oi small importance, it won for them the valuable aid of a power anxious 
to be avenged on England. With very keen attention France had long 
been studying the events that were developing in America. Even under 
Choiseul's ministry French agents had been sent to watch, and if need 
be to help, the progress of discontent against England. When the rup- 
ture between the mother country and its colonies was complete, the temp- 
tation was great indeed to take advantage of that unique opportunity 
to be avenged for the disasters of the Seven Years' War. In 1775 Ver- 
gennes, Secretary of State for foreign affairs, had decided to espouse the 
cause of the colonies, deeming a fresh war with England inevitable sooner 
or later, and rightly thinking that never would more favorable circum- 
stances present themselves. But Louis XVI hesitated; he was naturally 
inclined to peace, and had a confused feeling of the danger he as an abso- 
lute king would incur by supporting rebels and contributing to the triumph 
of principles like those of the Declaration of Independence; he was espec- 
ially cognizant of the deplorable condition of French finances, and feared 
lest a new war might bring fresh disasters. Besides, Turgor had long 
entertained him with the idea, correct in a certain sense, that England 
would lose more by retaining its colonies shuddering under the yoke than 
by acknowledging their independence. 

The French Alliance with the Colonies.— But if the government 
hesitated, public opinion did not do so. From the beginning it had de- 
clared for the Americans with rare unanimity. It was not merely the 



426 Birth of the United States 

feeling of national honor, so deeply offended by the English, that made 
so many friends for the insurgents among the French; it was enthusiasm 
for the ideas of liberty and .independence represented by the American 
cause, it was chivalrous devotedness for the cause of right against oppres- 
sion. And that sympathy was active. Beaumarchais, who had been 
employed in the secret politics of Louis XV, had already served as inter- 
mediary with the French government for shipping arms and munitions 
to the insurgents, under the fictitious firm name of Hortales & Co.; and 
the Marquis de Lafayette, then only twenty years old, had already (1777) 
left his young Vvife to go and offer his sword as well as his worldly means 
to the American Congress. "As soon as I knew of the quarrel," he wrote 
to Madame de Lafayette, "my heart was enrolled, and thereafter I dreamt 
only of joining my colors. America's welfare is most closely bound up 
with the welfare of mankind; that country will become the respected 
domicile of virtue, honesty, toleration, equality and peaceful liberty." 
Following his example, the younger nobility, fanatical for the new ideas, 
set out in large numbers for America; and it was not merely France that 
furnished it with heroic champions; the Poles Kosciuszko and Pulawski, 
the Swedes Fersen and Stedingk, the Bavarian De Kalb, the Prussian 
Von Steuben, and many others, crossed the Atlantic to fight for liberty. 
This was a great deal, but it was not enough; the Americans needed the 
avowed aid of France. Franklin, entrusted with asking it, reached Paris 
in December, 1776. The welcome accorded to him by that city was 
splendid and touching; he charmed and won everybody; Voltaire blessed 
his grandson. The pressure of public opinion on the government became 
irresistible. Then came the news of the capitulation at Saratoga; the 
Americans, then, were capable of defending themselves, nay, of achiev- 
ing victory. There could be no further hesitation. On February 6, 
1778, France signed with the representatives of the United States a treaty 
of commerce, friendship and alliance. It formally recognized them as 
a sovereign and independent power; it pledged itself to do nothing, should 
war break out with England, to recover Canada; they, on their part, pro- 
mised never to conclude peace separately with England. These two 
pledges were to be kept faithfully. 

England Declares War against France. — The news of this treaty 
produced violent anger in London. The British ambassador was imme- 
diately recalled from Paris, and war was declared. Wholly reawakened 
to its form.er hatred of France, England hastened to offer to the Ameri- 
cans a conciliation measure that would give them freedom of commerce, 
representation in Parliament, and withdrawal of the troops. The answer 



Birth of the United States 427 

was that too serious insults had been received from the mother country 
for any reparation except the acknowledgment of complete independence 
to be acceptable. Now England could not and would not grant this — 
its national honor rebelled against that dismemberment of the British 
empire, and Pitt himself, then overwhelmed with age and infirmity, had 
himself carried to the House of Lords, during the famous session of April 
7, 1778, to protest against any such proposal, as it were to call for war 
to the bitter end against the ambitious house of Bourbon. He had, he 
said, made an effort beyond his strength to come there, perhaps for the 
last time, to express his indignation against the proposal to acknowledge 
the sovereignty of America. He rejoiced in being still alive to protest 
against the dismemberment of an old and noble monarchy. His Majesty 
had inherited an empire whose extent was as large as its reputation was 
intact. Seventeen years before, that people was the terror of the world. 
Would they tarnish the fame of that nation by ignominiously abandoning 
its rights and its finest possessions .? And as the duke of Richmond de- 
clared that it was impossible for England to struggle against the Ameri- 
cans and France united, Pitt wished to answer, and tried to rise, but 
his strength failed him, and he fell in a faint, a forecast of England's fate 
beyond the Atlantic. It was his last appearance in Parliament. He 
died five weeks later, in time not to witness the humiliations reserved 
for England. 

A European Side-issue. — For a moment England could hope tnat 
that war might be only a repetition of the Seven Years' War and that France 
was about to be compelled once more to divide its resources between 
land and sea. The emperor Joseph H had long coveted Bavaria; the 
Elector Maximilian Joseph having died childless (December 30, 1777), 
he won over his heir, the Elector Palatine Charles Theodore, childless 
also, and the latter allowed to be wrested from him, by an agreement 
made on January 13, 1778, renunciation of his Bavarian inheritance. 
The annexation of Bavaria would have made Austria mistress of Ger- 
many, and Frederick H had resolved never to permit such an eventuality. 
He invaded Bohemia and Austrian Silesia, Prussians and Austrians were 
face to face on the Elbe, and war seemed imminent. It would certainly 
have broken out could Joseph II have counted on the aid of France, for 
which he had asked; but Vergennes and Louis XVI, wiser than Bernis 
and l,ouis XV, clearly signified that they disapproved of the annexation 
of Bavaria and would not give it a helping hand. Russia added its ser- 
vices to invite Austria to greater moderation. Joseph II yielded and 
abandoned his pretensions. The treaty of Teschen (March 13, I779)> 



428 Birth of the United States 

concluded through the mediation of Russia and France, left to Austria 
only a small portion of Bavaria on the Inn. There was nothing, then 
to divert France from maritime war. 

War of the Revolution — Second Period. — ^This naval war had 
already been begun, with less disproportion of strength than in the past, 
owing to the efforts of Choiseul, Turgot and Sartine, who had somewhat 
restored the power of France on the sea. The first encounter was that 
of the French frigate Belle-Poule with the English frigate Arethusa (June 
17, 1778), in which the latter was worsted. It was a very popular victory, 
as a prognostication of many others. But two American seamen had 
already won renown by inflicting enormous damage on English shipping. 
They were the Scotchman, John Paul (Jones), the most popular of Amer- 
ican naval heroes, though he abandoned the service of the United States 
before the close of the war, and John Barry, an Irishman, the first rank- 
ing captain commissioned under the new government, who never left 
the service, captured more prizes than Jones, won the last naval victory 
of the war, and was afterwards appointed (1794) to found and organize 
the present United States navy. Less than six weeks after the Belle- 
Poule's victory (July 27, 1778), Admiral D' Orvilliers, in command of 
the Brest fleet, wath Lamotte-Piquet and the duke of Chartres (the future 
Philippe Egalite), engaged in a pitched battle with the English admiral, 
Keppel, near Ouessant island. The result was not decisive; but France 
rejoiced at holding its own, while in England Keppel was adjudged by 
the council of war as not having won, but was acquitted. The other 
French fleet, that of Toulon, was sent to America under the command 
of Count d' Estaing. Clinton, Howe's successor, had just evacuated 
Philadelphia and taken refuge at New York, followed in his retreat by 
Washington, who at Monmouth (June 28, 1778) inflicted on him a reverse 
that would have been a disaster but for the treason of General Charles 
Lee, an Englishman, whose perfidy, always suspected, was proved only 
eighty years later. D' Estaing was, in concert with an American force, 
to effect a landing in Rhode Island so as to make the English retreat. 
This plan did not succeed. The attack on Rhode Island was repelled, 
and the allies separated, not without bitter reproaches. D' Estaing then 
went to continue the war in the Antilles, where the English islands of 
Dominica, Tabago, St. Vincent and Granada fell into the hands of the 
French, and where the English admiral Byron met with complete defeat 
off Granada. During that time Santa Lucia was the only conquest the 
English had been able to make. From the Antilles D* Estaing sailed 
towards the southern United States, where the English, by a happy inspir- 



Birth of the United States 429 

ation (for that region was much more Loyalist than the North), had 
decided to establish their base of operations. Savannah, the great empor- 
ium of English munitions in the South, he besieged in concert with the 
patriot militia. The assault, made prematurely, was a failure (1779), 
and D' Estaing was disgraced. 

Spain and Holland Join in the War. — But then a new^ adversary 
had entered the lists against the English, namely, Spain. This power 
had hesitated still longer than France, as was natural; did not it also have 
a powerful colonial empire in the New World to which the example of 
the North Americans might be contagious ? But, on the other hand, it had 
to win back from the English Gibraltar, Minorca and Florida. Charles 
III at last made up his mind to yield to the urgings of Louis XVI and 
made common cause with France (April 12, 1779). War was at once 
declared, and Admiral Cordova went to join the Brest fleet. Sixty-six 
Franco-Spanish sail then mastered the Channel, in which there were 
only thirty-eight English vessels. Forty thousand men were assembled 
on the coasts of Normandy and Brittany; the famous plan of invading 
England, so often formed and always frustrated, was at last about to be 
carried out under exceptionally favorable conditions; but D' Orvilliers, 
and especially his auxiliaries, lacked decision; an epidemic ravaged their 
vessels; and a storm scattered them off Plymouth. D' Orvilliers returned 
to Brest and Cordova to Cadiz (September, 1779). Don Juan de Lagara 
laid siege to Gibraltar. 

Lacking military victories, France then scored important diplomatic 
successes. England's acts of violence made these easy for it. That 
power announced the pretension of its right to blockade ports by mere 
declaration, that is, to confiscate the neutral merchandise and ships going 
to them, and consequently declared to be lawful prize all neutral vessels 
saihng from or to France. Against this tyranny France set up the prin- 
ciples of maritime law that have at last prevailed, namely, that the flag 
covers the merchandise, that is, that an enemy's merchandise is not seiz- 
able on a neutral ship, and that neutrals can carry on trade freely with 
every port of a belligerent power that is not really blockaded, on the sole 
condition of not carrying to it arms and munitions, that is, contraband 
of war. To resist the English vexations, Catharine II of Russia pub- 
lished (March 9, 1780) the declaration of armed neutrality, which affirmed 
the rights of neutrals, and announced the intention to have them respected. 
Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, Austria, Portugal and Naples gave their 
adherence to them. This league, poorly united and far from energetic, 
had little or no result; but it intimidated England, and was a moral vic- 
tory for France. 



430 Birth of the United States 

No power had suffered so much from English insolence as Holland. 
The English pretended to compel it to unite with them by virtue of old 
treaties of alliance, did violence to its commerce, seized the ships loaded 
with timber that it was sending to France, holding that the materials of 
naval construction were contraband of war. At first the Dutch adhered 
to arn-ed neutrality, but soon afterwards, urged by the French ambas- 
sador, La Vauguyon, faced the struggle with England in spite of the 
stathouder, William V (1780). Two years of an active diplomatic cam- 
paign had been necessary to wrest Holland from that English alfiance 
to which it had been enslaved for a century. It was a great triumph for 
French policy; but, unfortunately, the power of Holland had signally 
declined. Its colonies, poorly or not at all defended, were an easy prey 
for the English. Their admiral, Rodney, attacked the island of St. Eus- 
tache and there captured considerable plunder, the greater part of which 
was, however, recovered, as it was being sent to England, by the brave 
Lamotte-Piquet (1781). 

War of the Revolution — Third Period. — In spite of these alli- 
ances, the American cause might seem as if lost. The independence 
government was undermined by its own dissensions; at the close of 1779 
its paper money had fallen to four per cent of its nominal value; its army 
was visibly melting around Washington, until it had scarcely thirty-five 
hundred men under his orders. The English resolved to crush their 
enemies. They transferred their chief forces, under Cornwallis, to the 
South, occupied Charleston, where five thousand Americans were made 
prisoners (1780), defeated Gates and Green, and made themselves masters 
of nearly all of the Carolinas, from v/hich they would be able to make 
a rear movement on Virginia and Congress. The danger was further 
aggravated by the general demoralization; unpaid Pennsylvania militia 
mutinied, and, on account of a reprimand he had received from Congress 
and Washington, General Arnold entered into negotiations with the Eng- 
lish with a view to delivering to them the arsenal at West Point. The 
campaign of 1781 was decisive. France, which had already sent three 
millions to America in 1778, one million in 1779, and four millions in 1780 
found four millions mr»re for 1781, as well as seven ships of the line and 
six thousand men under Ternay and Rochambeau. Cornwallis pene- 
trated into Virginia and captured Yorktown and Gloucester. Leaving 
but a mere handful of troops watching New York, Washington marched 
against Cornwallis, formed a junction first with Rochambeau's division 
and then with that of Lafayette, who was disputing the ground with Corn- 
wallis. The English had to shut themselves up in Yorktown. Besieged 



Birth of the United States 431 

on land by Washington, Rochambeau and Lafayette, and on sea by De 
Grasse, who had defeated Admiral Hood's fleet* at the mouth of Chesa- 
peake Bay, they were so closely pressed that they were soon compelled 
to capitulate (October 19, 1781). Seven thousand prisoners, six war 
vessels and two hundred and four cannon were the fruits of this brilliant 
victory, which really ended the war by proving to the English their utter 
powerlessness to bring America back under the yoke. Lafayette might 
well exclaim that humanity had won its case, that liberty would never be 
without a refuge. The English evacuated Savannah and Charleston, 
concentrated their strength at New York, and thereafter thought only 
of emerging from the war with honor. 

Hostilities in the Antilles, Europe and India. — ^The question 
of American independence was settled, that of Franco-English rivalry 
was still pending, and was not to receive its decisive solution in that war. 
The Spaniards regained possession of Florida (1781). Guichen, D' Es- 
taing's successors, waged three naval battles in the Antilles against Rodney 
(April and May, 1780), but they were undecisive. The French, however, 
were victorious at Tabago and seized that island (1781). On the other 
hand, Rodney won over De Grasse the greatest naval battle of that war, 
near Saintes (April 13, 1782). The numerical superiority of the enemy, 
who had thirty-eight vessels against twenty-eight, the extreme earnest- 
ness of the fight, and the heroic conduct of De Grasse, who brought away 
his flagship only when there were but three sound men left upon it, kept 
that defeat from being humiliating to French national pride. Moreover 
it was not very advantageous to the English, who were unable to recover 
French conquests in the Antilles, while it helped the Americans against 
exorbitant demands from France. 

Success and reverse likewise balanced each other in Europe. The 
duke of Crillon brilliantly won Minorca, in spite of a heroic defence by 
its garrison (1782). But Gibraltar remained impregnable. When Rod- 
ney had beaten the besieging army of Don Juan de Langara and revict- 
ualed the place, it was in vain that immense efforts were made; in vain 
did forty thousand Franco-Spaniards, under the count of Artois and the 
duke of Bourbon, besiege the place, while it was attacked from sea by 
a fleet of forty-six vessels of the line and Colonel d' Arcon's floating batter- 
ies, ten of which were burned by an English fireship (September 13, 1782); 
it became necessary to change the siege into a blockade, and then to ac- 
knowledge that Gibraltar could not be taken. An attack on Jersey (1781) 
had also failed. 

The war extended even to the East Indies, where the English first 



432 Birth of the United States 

seized France's five commercial stations. But they then had to do with 
a formidable adversary, Hyder Ali of Mysore, a Mussulman adventurer. 
Scarcely had they succeeded in conquering him when they found a new 
one in the person of De SufFren. That able admiral, remarkable espec- 
ially for the rapidity of his movements and the impetuosity of his attacks, 
inaugurated his victories by destroying in the Cape Verde Islands the 
squadron under Commodore Johnstone sent out to attack the Cape of 
Good Hope, then still belonging to the Dutch. After having himself 
released the Cape, SufFren appeared on the coast of India, and there fought 
four successive engagements with Admiral Hughes, all somewhat to his 
advantage; the recapture of Pondichery and that of Trincomolee in Cey- 
lon, which the English had just taken from the Dutch, were the reward 
of these victories (February-September, 1782). A fifth combat at Gon- 
delur (June, 1783) was a more decisive advantage. The French assumed 
marked superiority in India. But peace ended their conquests. 

Treaty of Versailles. — ^The battle of Saintes enabled England 
to negotiate, since it had saved the honor of its arms; and its ambition 
went no farther. Lord North's ministry had not survived the Yorktown 
disaster. His successors, Rockingham and Shelbourne, had had the 
concluding of peace as their chief task. Its preliminaries were signed 
on November 30, 1782, and the definitive treaty was concluded at Ver- 
sailles on September 3, 1783. The independence of the United States 
was acknowledged, as well as the possession by them of all the territory 
south of the great lakes and east of the Mississippi. Reciprocal resti- 
tution of English and French conquests was stipulated, with the excep- 
tion, however, that Tabago and Senegal were given to France; besides, 
the humiliating article relative to the fortifications of Dunkirk was sup- 
pressed; and these, with a little glory, were the only direct benefits which 
France derived from a very costly struggle in which it had shown itself 
on the whole capable of holding its own against its vindictive enemy. 
Spain kept Minorca and Florida, but restored the Bahamas to the English. 
Holland, which concluded its separate treaty a little later (1784), recov- 
ered all the colonies it had lost except Ncgapatam. The statesmen of 
the clos'mg years of the old regime in France complacently predicted, 
after that treaty, the approaching fall of the power of England; but they 
were in error. The loss of its American colonies did not keep that country 
from remaining the first maritime and commercial power, and the very 
extensive business relations that were to be established between it and 
Its former dependencies grown into a prosperous power enriched it more 
than would have done the maintenance of the old colonial pact. In losing 



Birth of the United States 433 

them England found, in short, that it had lost nothing of its true great- 
ness. The consequences of the American war were much more important 
to France itself; for that war was one of the direct causes of the French 
Revolution. It hastened it by aggravating the disorder in the finances, 
and in that way precipitating the final crisis; it hastened it especially by 
developing among the French, and chiefly among the nobility, love of 
liberty and a taste for republican formulas. The enthusiasm with which 
Lafayette was welcomed on his return from America, the infatuation 
for the American order of the Cincinnati, and admiration for the Declara- 
tion of Independence were symptoms which the old monarchy might 
regard with great uneasiness. 

The United States after the War. — The most critical time for 
the new republic was certainly that immediately following its victory. 
The army, now unoccupied and reduced to the direst poverty, had for a 
long time past received nothing from Congress but vague promises; it 
knew it was regarded with suspicion and disfavor; it was strongly tempted 
to take by force what was being refused to it; and again it was Washington 
who succeeded in calming his companions in arms, persuading them 
not to tarnish their glory with attacks on their country's liberty, and also 
persuading Congress to do them justice. Thus did he save his country 
from a civil war, and he crowned his good deeds by then voluntarily retir- 
ing to private life. None the less on that account did the States remain 
disunited, the finances in the most frightful disorder, the governments 
without strength, the populations unbridled; insurrections broke out 
in the northern States demanding; "No more debts! Equal di\ision of 
property!" No one any longer had confidence in the future, and one rr.ight 
believe that the new Republic, devoid of all real central power and incap- 
able of creating any, was about to sink in the midst of terrible convulsions. 
Vv ashington himself said afterwards that it long remained doubtful whether 
the country would survive as an independent republic or, fallen from its 
federal strength and dignity, so vast a power would be torn into shreds 
and patches. This deplorable state of affairs was due to the ineffective 
character of the constitution that had been adopted during the war, at 
the request (1777) of the Continental Congress convened two years before. 
The new Congress of the Confederation, finally constituted only in 1781 
by the consent of Maryland, could not enforce its enactments because 
of the absence of a central executive power; and more than once neigh- 
boring States were on the point of going to war with each other over customs 
dues, for each commonwealth could make its own tariff laws. Nor could 
the Congress collect any revenues; it had to depend on the voluntary 

28 



434 Birth of the United States 

contributions of the States, which were meagre, and, lacking the power 
of the purse, it practically lacked all power. But, when the prospect 
seemed gloomiest, there appeared a statesman to meet the emergency. 
As Washington was the Father of his Country, so was another Virginian, 
James Madison, to be the Father of the Constitution. At his suggestion 
a conference of delegates from the States met at Annapolis in Maryland 
(1786) to formulate amendments to the Articles of Confederation; but, 
instead, they called a general convention to meet in Philadelphia in May 
of the following year. Not only is this action to be placed also to Madi- 
son's credit, but we must award to him the original outline of the frame 
of government finally adopted by this most august gathering of the coun- 
try's men of the highest eminence. Washington was called from his 
retirement and chosen to preside over the deliberations. Associated 
with him, besides Madison, were Franklin, now an octogenarian but 
still a sage, Gouverneur Morris, the author of the final draft of the 
Constitution, Hamilton, who was to be the reorganizer of the country's 
finances, and many others of scarcely less ability. After four months' 
deliberations that were often so stormiy as to threaten disruption, a Con- 
stitution universally acknowledged to be the wisest political work in the 
world's history was adopted (September 17, 1787), and sent to the various 
States for approval, which it received after much opposition in several 
of them. 

The Constitution of 1787. — There was but one serious blot upon 
this instrument, the maintenance of negro slavery by a coalition between 
the New England States and those of the extreme South, the Carolinas 
and Georgia. Virginia was then in favor of abolishing it, but was after- 
wards among those commonwealths that flew to arms in striving to retain 
it, wh'ile, on the other hand. New England was the first section of the 
country to get rid of it. Religious liberty, however, had triumphed along 
with political independence. Before the close of the war the most impor- 
tant States had incorporated it in their fundamental laws. As far as 
the laws of England would permit, it had always existed in Pennsylvania 
and Delaware, where it was novv- made complete. It was restored in 
Maryland, where it had been abolished in 1692. It was introduced even 
into Puritan Massachusetts, Episcopalian Virginia, and intolerant New- 
York, m spite of the frantic efforts of John Jay, over whom Gouverneur 
Morris had triumphed after a long struggle. It was one of the very few 
boons to be credited to the Congress of the Confederation, which by its 
last important act, the fam.ous Ordinance of 1787, perpetuated it in the 
Northwestern Territory (between the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Lakes), 



Birth of the United States 435 

in which, as a part of Canada, it had existed since the Quebec Act (1774). 
It was now embodied in the Constitution, which decreed: "No rehgious 
test shall ever be required as a quaHfication to any office or pubHc trust 
under the United States." And the scope of this provision was soon 
(1790) to be enlarged by the First Amendment: "Congress shall make 
no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free 
exercise thereof." The States that had not anticipated, followed this 
rule in time; but that which had proposed it in Federal matters. New 
Hampshire, was the last to adopt it as a local measure, and then only by 
dead-letter consent (since 1877). The Constitution, adopted with resigna- 
tion and weariness in some of the States, encountered strenuous oppo- 
sition in others before, by the ratification of nine of the thirteen common- 
wealths, it became the fundamental law of the nation by the approval 
of New Hampshire (June 21, 1788). While creating a strong central 
government consisting of three coordinate branches, legislative, executive 
and judiciary, it left to the States the largest possible amount of autonomy 
consistent with permanent union. In time it came to be regarded, and 
has long been universally esteemed, as the wisest frame of government 
ever devised. Among all the written constitutions now possessed by 
the various States throughout the world, it is not only still the best, but 
the oldest. Before the government for which it provided could be organ- 
ized, two more States, Virginia and New York, ratified it, leaving only 
two. North Carolina and Rhode Island, to give their adhesion later on. 
One of the last acts of the old Congress of the Confederation was a pro- 
vision for elections and installation under the new order. For President 
no man was thought of but Washington, who received every electoral 
vote. In New York, where the new national legislature had been organ- 
ized during the first week of April, 1789, he was installed in office on the 
30th of the same month. In 1793 he was reelected to a second four years' 
term, but declined a third in 1797, thus establishing a precedent from 
which there has since been no departure. Profane history records no 
glor}^ purer and more beautiful than his. He carried with him to the 
grave (1799) any resentment that had ever been felt against him and 
left behind him the reputation of having been the most unselfish of war- 
riors and statesmen, "the greatest of good men, and the best of great 
men," as Edward Everett has happily said. 



CHAPTER XXVII 



Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 



Catharine II, Frederick II, and Poland. — ^While a new nation was 
arising on the western side of the Atlantic, an ancient one was dying in old 
Europe, and that Europe itself, but especially France, was on the eve of 
passing through the most terrible crisis in its history. The life was being 
squeezed out of Poland by three bordering powers two of which had but re- 
cently taken rank among the great States. Peter the Great's real successor 
was the wife of his grandson (Peter III), Princess Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, 
who had taken the name Catharine when joining the Russo-Greek Church, 
and who, after the deposition and murder of her husband, reigned over 
Russia as Catharine II. Poland, with its elective and powerless royalty, 
with its anarchical nobility and reUgious intrigues, was as it were an absurd- 
ity amid the absolute monarchies of the eighteenth century. But in politics 
such absurdities cannot last; Poland had therefore to reform its constitu- 
tion or perish; its neighbors kept it from the former course, and it fell 
a victim to their greed. In the first place Catharine brought about the 
election of her favorite. Count Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, as king, 
and signed with Frederick II, who had already proposed dismemberment 
to her, a secret treaty for the maintenance of the Polish constitution. Cath- 
arine hoped to evade partition and reserve the whole kingdom for herself 
alone. When she saw the diet disposed, by a strange aberration at such a 
time, to deny political privileges to members of the Greek Church, she took 
the latter under her protection and had two Catholic bishops seized and sent 
to Siberia. The Catholics at once organized the Confederation of Bar, 
which adopted as its standard a banner bearing an image of the Virgin and 
the Child Jesus. The Latin cross marched against the Greek cross; 
peasants murdered their lords; Poland was deluged with blood; the 
Prussians invaded the northwestern part of the country under the pretext 
of protecting the few Protestants there, the Austrians were the first to make 
actual seizure of Polish territory, a few starostaships in the southwest, 
and the Russians poured in everywhere from the east. France was unable 
to give any direct aid to Poland, but it at least urged the Turks against 

436 



Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 437 

Russia. They, however, lost some of their provinces, and their fleet was 
burned at Tchesme. Frederick II, uneasy at these victories of the czarina, 
brought her back to the affairs of Poland, and reminded her of the idea 
of partition, adding to it the threat of a war with Austria and Prussia in 
case of refusal. Catharine yielded, and on April 19, 1773, the crime was 
perpetrated. The empress Maria Teresa took Galicia or the northeastern 
slope of the Carpathians, Frederick the countries which he needed to con- 
nect the province of Prussia with his German States, and Catharine several 
palatinates (starostaships) in the east. 

The Destruction of Poland Completed. — Having satisfied Prussia's 
covetousness and her own in Poland, Catharine resumed her plans against 
Turkey and imposed on it the treaty of Kainardji (1774), which gave to the 
Russians several cities, Hberty to navigate in the Black Sea, and the protec- 
torate over Moldo-Wallachia (now Rumania); to the Tartars of the 
Crimea and the Kuban independence in regard to the sultan, that is, their 
early subjection to the ruler of Russia; to the Greeks, whom Russian in- 
trigues had spurred to rebellion, an amnesty that showed them a zealous 
protector in the prince recognized as head of the Orthodox Church at St. 
Petersburg. The following year Catharine put an end to the republic of 
the Zaporogian Cossacks (on the Dnieper), which stood in the way of the 
expansion of Russian power towards the Black Sea. In 1777 she purchased 
his sovereignty from the khan of the Crimea and built Sebastopol; she even 
made the king of Georgia, on the southern slope of the Causasus, accept 
her protectorate; and, in the last place, she came to an understanding with 
the emperor Joseph II as to the partition of the Turkish empire. The 
Divan declared war (1787) and kept it up bravely for four years; but the 
Ottomans would have succumbed had not the czarina, menaced by the 
military demonstrations of Prussia, which had collected eighty thousand 
men in its eastern provinces, and by the hostile dispositions of England 
and Holland, consented to the treaty of Jassy which made the Cnitstej 
the frontier between the two empires (1792). Turkey, formerly so menacing 
to Europe, was saved once more by three Christian powers that did nc 
want the equilibrium of Europe overthrown to the advantage of only one. 

But the Poles paid for the Turks. Warned by the first dismember- 
ment, they had wished to reform their constitution, to abolish the Liberum 
Veto (by which a single member of the diet could block any measure), to 
make royalty hereditary, and to divide the legislative power between the 
king, the senate and the nuncios or deputies. But Prussia and Austria, 
were then engaged in trying to suppress the revolution in France, firmly 
resolved on not letting such a thing be done behind their backs. Two 



438 Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 

later partitions, brought about within two years of each other (1793 and 
1795), abohshed Sobieski's kingdom. If, in the treaties which followed, 
the German peoples in their turn were divided Hke flocks, and their coun- 
tries like farms at the convenience of the conquerors, this was the apphca- 
tions of the example set by the authors of the great Polish spoliation. 
Austria in 1806 and 1809 and Prussia after Jena and Tilsitt, suffered what 
the Poles had had to endure from them. Prussia and Russia, having 
acquired the taste by their success in Poland, prepared the same fate for 
Sweden. They pledged each other by a secret treaty to maintain in that 
country the factions that had sprung up there after the death of Charles XII 
and that their money supported. A revolution effected by Gustavus III 
in 1772 and a measure known as the Constitutional Act of 1789 warded 
off this danger. But the nobles assassinated that king friendly to reforms 
and. hostile to Russia (1792), and Catharine II, then occupied in the east 
while Prussia was busy in the west, left that old kingdom in peace. 

Discoveries and Literature in the Eighteenth Century. — To the 

sciences the eighteenth century was what the seventeenth had been to litera- 
ture and the sixteenth to arts and creeds, an epoch of renovation. Physics 
was then regenerated by the fine electrical experiments of Franklin, Volta 
and Galvani, who invented the Hghtning rod and the pile; mathematical 
analysis by Lagrange and Laplace; botany by Linnaeus and De Jussieu; 
zoology by Buffon, who also originated geology; and Lavoisier gave im- 
movable foundations to the science of chemistry. AppHcations were al- 
ready multipHed, and man, striving to master the laws of nature, at once 
wanted to turn them to his own account. Watt discovered, or rather im- 
proved, the steam-engine and made it practicable (1769), while in 1783 
a steamboat ascended the Saone, and the Montgolfier brothers in 1782 
sent the first balloon up in the air. A Httle later Jenner introduced the 
practice of vaccination as a preventive of small-pox. Of the navigators 
of tlie period we have already spoken. 

While physicists were discovering new forces, and sailors new lands, 
writers, on their part, were finding a new world. Literature was not, as in 
the preceding century, confined to the domain of art; it had trespassed 
everywhere and claimed to regulate everything. The strongest powers of 
the French mind seemed bent on seeking the public welfare, often by 
devious ways and with dubious results. Men no longer strove merely to 
construct fine verses, but to utter fine maxims and occasionally to weave 
plausible fallacies; they did not now depict the caprices of society to hold 
them up to ridicule, but to change society itself, and some of their remedies 
would change it for the worse. Literature was becoming a weapon that all. 



Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 439 

the imprudent as well as the capable, wished to handle. And, by a strange 
inconsistency, those who had most to suffer from that invasion of the men 
of letters into the domain of politics were those who applauded it most. 
That eighteenth century society, so frivolous and so sensual, was, how- 
ever, worshipful of mental culture, and in it talent had almost the standing 
of birth. Three men were at the head of the movement, namely, Vol- 
taire, full of whims, caprices, passion and vices, but fighting for freedom 
of thought during his whole life; Montesquieu, who, while studying the 
reason for laws and the nature of governments, taught m.en to examine 
and compare the existing constitutions, so as to seek in them the best 
which he pointed out in free England; and lastly Rousseau and his Social 
Contract, in which he proclaimed the- principle of national sovereignty 
and universal suffrage. Alongside of them the Encyclopredists treated 
of the various branches of human knowledge and expounded them in 
a manner often menacing to social order and always hostile to religion. 
And in the last place Ouesnay created a new science, Political Economy, 
which was splendidly developed by Adam Smith. Thus human thought, 
hitherto confined to metaphysical and religious speculations or to the 
disinterested worship of the muses, now undertook to approach the m.ost 
difficult problems of society. And all, philosophers as well as econo- 
mists, sought the solution in the direction of liberty. From the Ouesnay 
school had come the axiom: "Let it alone, let things take their course;" 
while as to politics the Marquis d' Argenson had said: "Not too much 
governing" —maxims which French statesmen have not yet learned. 

Ideas and Institutions at Odds. — ^Thus was the agitation of men's 
mmds, formerly aroused by the discussion of dogmas, now produced for 
wholly earthly interests. Men no longer sought to determine God's 
attributes or the limitations of grace and free will; but they studied man 
and society, their rights and their duties; and as the Middle Ages and 
feudalism, expiring at the hands of kings, had covered the ground with 
their ruins, men everywhere found most shocking inequalities and the 
strangest confusion. Accordingly protests were loud, numerous and 
pressing. Men Vv^ished administration to be no longer a frightful laby- 
rinth in which the most observant man got lost, and public finances to 
cease being pillaged by the king, his ministers and the court; men wished 
personal liberty to be guaranteed against arbitrary impris'onment, and 
property against confiscations; and the criminal code, still aided by tor- 
ture, to be less sanguinary, as well as the civil code more equitable. Men 
demanded religious toleration instead of dogma imposed under penalty 
of life; the law based on the principles of natural and rational right instead 



440 Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 

of privilege for some and arbitrariness for all; unity of weights and measures 
instead of extreme confusion; the taxes paid by everybody instead of 
being imposed on poverty while wealth was exempt; emancipation of 
labor and free competition instead of monopolies of corporations; and, 
in the last place, free admission to the public offices instead of favor for 
birth and fortune. There was a revolution to be brought about, and 
everybody saw it coming. In 1709 Fenelon had said: "The dilapidated 
machine still moves with the old hobble given to it and will fall to pieces 
at the first shock." 

Reforms Effected by the Governments. — ^These words were true 
not merely for France; they were applicable to all of absolutist Europe, 
and if the people did not understand everywhere the necessity of reforms, 
the princes felt the need of making some. Able and bold, if in some respects 
unscrupulous, ministers, such as Pombal at Lisbon, Aranda at Madrid, 
and Tanucci at Naples, encouraged industry, agriculture and science, 
opened roads, canals and schools, suppressed industry, agriculture and 
science, opened roads, canals and schools, suppressed privileges and 
abuses, and, in accordance with the irreligious and arbitrary spirit of 
the age, banished the Jesuits first and afterwards had the order suppressed. 
The grand duke of Tuscany created provinces by transform.ing marshes 
with filling into fertile farms; the king of Sardinia granted redemption 
of feudal dues to his subjects; in Austria Joseph II abolished tithes, duty- 
service, baronial rights and convents, but he also strove to enslave the 
Church to the State and to regulate religious ceremonies, whioh tempted 
Frederick II to call him the sacristan-emperor. In Sweden Gustavus III 
restored twenty-two holidays to labor, prohibited torture, and doubled 
the product of the iron and copper mines. Mention has already been 
made of the reforms brought about in Prussia by Frederick II. She 
whose depraved morals have won the title of Messalina of the North and 
conquests that of Catharine the Great, flattered Voltaire, Diderot and 
D' Alembert so as through them to mislead public opinion; she caused 
to be drawn up magnificent plans of a constitution which she did not 
cany into practice; she built schools which she left empty, and, when 
the governor of Moscow became distressed over this, she wrote to him: 
*'My dear prince, do not worry about the Russians having no desire to 
become educated. If I am establishing schools, it is not for ourselves, 
but for Europe looking at us. As soon as our peasants would become 
enlightened, neither you nor I would remain in our place." These remarks 
help us to understand the Russia of to-daj^. 

Selfishness of the Princes. — A new spirit of reform was breathing 




From a Painting by Gosse. 
NAPOLEON AT TILSIT. 

Napoleon and the Queen Consort Louisa of Prussia signed a treaty at 
Tilsit on July 8, 1807, by which Prussia was robbed of all her Rhineland 
possessions. 




WELLINGTON AT WATERLOO GIVING THE WORD TO ADVANCE. 

When the French staggered back In final despair, after hurling themselves 
a dozen times against the British ranljs, the great English commander, Welling- 
ton, shouted "Let all the line advance," and Napoleon's shattered army was 
swept from the field. 



Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 441 

over Europe, a social and no longer a religious reform, preached by phil- 
osophers or economists, and not at all by monks or theologians. This 
time also the princes had put themselves at the head of the movement 
so as to derive personal gain from it, as they had done through the sec- 
ularizations of the Lutheran and Anglican Reformation. They sought 
to give happiness to their peoples; at the expense of the twofold, feudal 
and religious, aristocracy, they freed them from vexatious or onerous 
burdens; but they strove especially to increase their own revenues and 
strength. All those princes said with the emperor of Austria: "My special 
trade is that of being a royalist," a remark similar to one which De Segur 
attributes to Catharine II: "I am an aristocrat, and I must follow my 
trade." And they held on to the discretionary power which feudal anarchy 
had enabled them to seize, but which the new interests of the peoples con- 
demned them to not being able to retain. Nothing, then, was changing 
in reality; in spite of those paternal solicitudes and from lack of regular 
institutions, everything still depended on the men, so that public pros- 
perity changed with those who remained its supreme dispensers. Thus 
did Spain under Charles IV and Godoi fall as low as under Charles II. 
The times of the lazzaroni revived at Naples under Queen Caroline and 
her minister Acton. Joseph II put Austria in agitation without regen- 
erating it, and we have seen what Catharine II thought of reforms for 
her people. In Prussia only did a great man do great things, and in 
France able ministers who wished to do likewise having been driven from 
power, the nation was itself to take charge of carrying them out. 

France under Louis XV and Louis XVI. — At the time of the treaty 
of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) France had still the. part of the first military 
power in Europe; but this part was taken from it by the humiliations of 
the Seven Years' War, and after that its army had no opportunity of regain- 
ing its old renown, for France intervened in the serious affairs of eastern 
Europe only through diplomatic notes and some volunteers. As for the 
acquisitions made under Louis XV, that of Corsica (1769) was the result 
of a bargain with Genoa, which sold the island for forty millions, and 
that of Lorraine (1776) the carrying out of a treaty for which an almost 
century old occupation of that duchy by French troops had long prepared 
the way. There was nothing very glorious, then, in these affairs. But 
the American war, a few years later, shed honor on France's navy, and, 
w^hile Prussia, Austria and Russia were destroying a nation, France had 
the honor of helping another to come into existence. It was a victory 
for opinion, and before dying, old France regained somewhat of the proud 
attitude of which Rosbach had robbed it. Internally, Louis XV dishonored 



442 Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 

royalty by his vices (the stag park, Du Barry, Pompadour, etc.), and 
compromised it with scandalous dealings (the famine pact); he drove 
out the Jesuits, thus offending a powerful party, and suppressed the par- 
liaments, which struck down another. Men became irritated at the fre- 
quency of arbitrary imprisonments, and money interests became alarmed 
at the financial proceedings of the controller-general, the Abbe Terray, 
who thus justified bankruptcy: "The king is master." Louis saw some 
terrible expiation coming, but he thought he would have time to escape 
from it. "This w411 last quite as long as I; my successor will get himself 
out of the scrape as best he can." 

That successor was the most honest and the weakest of men. He 
abolished service-labor, the civil disabilities of Protestants and Jews 
and torture, which Pussort and Lamoignon had already condemned over 
a century before. To the ministry he called Turgor, who was capable 
of preventing revolution by reforms, or at least of restraining and directing 
it; but in answer to the clamors of courtiers he dismissed him, saying: 
" Only M. Turgor and I have loved the people." The Genevese banker, 
Necker, did not succeed in filling up the abyss of the deficit which the 
expenses of the American war had enlarged. The government now- 
lived only on loans. Calonne in a time of profoundest peace and in three 
years increased the debt by five hundred millions. An assembly of the 
notables, convened in 1787, could not point out any remedy. On all 
sides men demanded the States General; the government, at the end of 
its resources, promised them, and Necker, recalled to the ministry, had 
it decided that the number of deputies of the Third Estate would be equal 
to that of the other two orders — in that way alone it w^as indicated that 
great reforms were about to be effected. 

A Bad Administrative Organization. — And if reform was ever 
needed, it was there and then, for the regime of "red tape" had reached its 
climax. Royal authority was carried out through the intermediation of coun- 
cils and ministers. The part of the former, whose highly complicated organ- 
ization changed frequently in the course of the old regime's duration, 
such as upper or secret council, council of dispatches, council of finances, 
privy council or council of parties, had become far from important. Most 
of the time the decrees they were authorized to issue were but the work 
of the ministers only; only the privy council or council of parties still held 
an important place, especially through its judiciary attributes, which made 
it as it were a sort of court of appeals placed over the whole administra- 
tion of justice. There were six ministers, namely the four secretaries 
of state of the king's household, of war, of the navy, of foreign affairs. 



Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 443 

the controller general of the finances, and the chancellor. Their depart- 
ments presented a strange complication of attrihutes; they divided the 
kingdom among them geographically, the frontier provinces depending 
on the secretary of state for v/ar, the States regions and most of the interior 
provinces on the secretary of state of the king's household. The foreign 
affairs department had in addition to concern itself v^ ith gifts and pensions. 
On the king's household depended ecclesiastical affairs, especially the 
important department of the conferring of benefices for which the king 
had the right to provide. The general control of the finances, by far 
the most important ministry, was concerned not only with receipts and 
expenditures, but also with agriculture, industry, commerce, public works, 
public aid, municipal administration, and really with everything, as the 
commissioners in all the interior provinces of the kingdom were appointed 
and recalled by the controller general and depended on him, and as 
the attributes ot the commissioners were themselves unlimited. The 
chancellor was the head of the department of justice, and likewise of the 
general bookselling bureau, which he delegated to a special official. There 
was even greater complication in the administration of local affairs. 
In France there were forty-three military governments, thirty-three com- 
m'lss'ionerships, one hundred and thirty-nine dioceses, seventeen par- 
liaments or supreme courts, and twenty-one universities. The boun- 
daries of these different districts did not coincide with one another, and 
sometimes not even with the frontiers of the kingdom; for several French 
dioceses depended on foreign metropolitans, or vice versa. Nor did 
they coincide with the boundaries of the historical provinces. 

Absence of National Unity. — In the greater part of the kingdom 
the old local States had disappeared, and as in these provinces, for the 
sake of selling the offices, the royal power had created courts invested 
with a certain fiscal and administrative jurisdiction, these regions were 
designated as election countries. There, then, the imposts were assessed 
and apportioned by royal officers, and there was no restraint on the royal 
power to impose taxes. In about a quarter of the kingdom, on the con- 
trary, there were provincial States regulating their own budget as they 
pleased and contributing to the general expenses of the kingdom in " grat- 
uitous gifts" which they voted. The State countries were certainly in 
less close relation with the treasury than the others, because the royal 
power was compelled to reckon with the resistance of their assemblies. 
But it has been by no means proved that their condition was the more 
enviable on that account, for the administration of the States was full 
of abuses and pilferings, and all the advantage of administrative inde- 



444 Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 

pendence went to the ecclesiastical, baronial or municipal oligarchy thai 
alone and exclusively filled the provincial States. Among the pro\inces 
in which this rule was best maintained were Brittany, whose States, sub- 
ject to the control of a very numerous nobility, held their usually extremely 
turbulent sessions every two years, and Languedoc, in whose States the 
dominant influence was that of the twenty-three bishops of the province. 
The name of Imposition countries was occasionally given to provinces 
recently added to the kingdom in which there were neither elections nor 
States, such as Alsace, Lorraine, Corsica, etc. These diversities of con- 
dition, the persistence of internal customs dues at many points, the extreme 
inequality in regard to imposts, the diflPerences of legislation, and the 
privileges of the provinces made the diflPerent parts of the kingdom foreign 
to one another and maintained there a local spirit that was the exact con- 
trary of patriotism. Royalty had brought about the territorial unity of 
France; but much still remained to be done to establish moral and admin- 
istrative unity. The Bretons spoke of the Breton nation, the Provencals 
of the Provencal nation; they regarded themselves as States joined, but 
not assimilated, not even incorporated with the kingdom. 

Abuses in the Organization of Justice. — Of all the institutions 
of the old regime, there were none more complicated and vicious than 
those of justice. Men had reason to criticise: i. The extreme multiplicity 
of jurisdictions. There were four different sorts of justice — baronial, 
administered by the lords on their estates, and having now scarcely any 
efficacy but from the point of view of return for baronial rights; it was 
reduced to a minimum of competence, and was fruitful of all kinds of 
abuses; ecclesiastical justice, rendered in the ecclesiastical courts of the 
bishops, archbishops and primates, which passed judgment on cases 
called spiritual, and whose competence had also been gradually limited 
in the course of time, to the advantage of the royal courts; municipal 
justice, rendered by the city corporations, and likewise very much reduced; 
and lastly royal justice, which had for centuries gradually supplanted 
all the others, but without making them wholly disappear. And royal 
justice itself presented the greatest complications. It was rendered in 
the first stage in over eight hundred lower courts, and on appeal in the 
thirteen parliaments, that of Paris being the most important of all. 2, 
Incapacity and abuses of the membership of the judiciary. On this point 
there arose almost universal and well founded complaints. One of the 
consequences of heredity was the placing on the parliament seats of young 
men without experience, character or study, and occasionally immoral, 
who sometimes in their teens found themselves masters of the life and 



Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 445 

property of those coming before them for trial; many felt insuperable 
disgust for their business, did not attend to their duties, and let trials 
go by the board almost to an incredible extent. Others, on the contraiy, 
took piide in great assiduity, but in assiduity that was often far from 
disinterested, and tended especially to increase as much as possible their 
revenues. Corruption was rampant. 3, Complications of jurisprudence 
and legislation. But the ignorance of the judges was becoming alm.ost 
excusable, if we reflect on the extreme complexity of legislation, carried 
to such an extent that the establishing of one and the same civil law for 
the whole kingdom still seemed, on the eve of 1789, the most desirable, 
but the most unrealizable of Utopias. There were two great divisions 
in the kingdom, the written law prevailing in the south and the common 
law elsewhere. The former was modified by a large number of local 
customs, and there were about sixty leading and three hundred minor 
ones in the latter. In addition there were the royal ordinances, the decrees 
of the courts, and the commentaries of lawyers. Such a complication 
followed from this state of aflFairs that it was commonly said a suit for 
a dollar made a lawyer examine over twenty folio volumes. 4, But there 
were even greater abuses in criminal justice. The indictment was secret; 
the accused had no one to defend him; no reason need be given for the 
sentence; a most summary formula sent a man to death; and it was the 
custom to regard as guilty every person who was accused. The penalties 
were atrocious, such as branding, the pillory, the whipping post, the galleys, 
the wheel, disemboweling, and even burning at the stake. As torturings 
and executions were public, the populace acquired a taste for blood and 
contempt for human life, which may explain the crimes of the frightful 
Reign of Terror. Judicial errors were exceedingly numerous with such 
a system of criminal jurisprudence; in the closing years of the old regime 
1 really horrifying number of them was revealed. 

Abuses in Levying and Collecting Taxes. — ^The imposts were 
numerous and complicated. Of direct taxes there were, in fact, the poll, 
the capitation, and the twentieths; of indirect, excise, salt-tax, and mercan- 
tile. The poll-tax, permanent since Charles VII, was preeminently a 
peasant impost. Sometimes it was personal (in over three-fifths of the 
kingdom) and weighed on the peasants by reason of their presumed means; 
it was then a veritable impost on gross revenue; sometimes it was real 
and weighed on the peasants' lands, no matter what the condition of the 
owners might be. The nobility, the clergy, and many other privileged 
persons paid a personal poll-tax. The lands of the nobles, occupied by 
peasants and taxed again on that account, in a real poll-tax region, escaped 



446 Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 

taxation as far as the owners were concerned. These numerous exceptions 
were a reproach to the system, as was also the arbitrary character of parish 
assessments. The capitation tax, created in 1695, was more just in prin- 
ciple because it was general; but it very soon came to be strangely abused 
in application. The clergy had redeemed themselves from it, while the 
nobility were taxed only to a very small extent; and as the capitation of 
those subject to the poll-tax was assessed so much to the pound on the 
poll, it reproduced all the evils of the latter. The twentieths, intended 
to reach all forms of revenue, were just in theory, but were scarcely any 
longer so in practice; the privileged escaped them to a very large extent. 
As duty-service was obligatory, it may be regarded as a direct tax. It 
was an obligation on villagers to give so many days free to the building 
and repairing of roads. The excise was a variety of taxes on the circula- 
tion and sale of beverages, the brands of iron, paper, cardboard, oils and 
soaps, extremely diverse taxes, varying with the different provinces, and 
so complicated that contemporaries scarcely understood them. Of the 
salt tax there were five great divisions in the kingdom, each paying a 
different rate and one exempt. What made this tax extraordinarily unpop- 
ular was not the excessive price of a necessity, but still more the domiciliary 
visits that it entailed, the general fraud it provoked, and the consequent 
cruel punishment. The customs dues were also extremely complicated, 
so much so, according to Necker, as to make them "a monstrous oddity 
to the eyes of reason." The third great source of the States's revenues 
was the product of the royal domain and of royal rights over the property 
of others. The State did not itself collect the direct taxes and domain 
dues; it farmed them out. The powerful company of the sixty farmers- 
general levied them on its own account; it derived benefits from them 
that were not excessive, however, and of which a considerable portion 
went to courtiers, and occasionally to the king himself. 

Defects of the Military Organization. — A privileged body, the 
king's household, which had not appeared on the battlefield since Fon- 
tenoy, absorbed large sums and no longer rendered any service. Superb 
troops were its different corps, namely, the bodyguard, the Swiss guards, 
the French guards, the light cavalry, the gray and the black musketeers, 
the gendarmes of the guard, and the king's gendarmery; but they were 
now only a costly anachronism, and under Louis XVI they were reduced 
considerably. The regular army, always recruited by voluntary enlist- 
ment and in which the system of buying commissions was still in vogue 
united serious defects with indisputable qualities; there were insufficiency 
of effective strength, extremely frequent desertions, and little experience 



Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 447 

in command despite the founding of the MiHtary School (1751), and 
exaggerated multiplicity of grades. In 1781 De Segur's famous regula- 
tion (issued perhaps against that minister's will), which required four 
degrees of paternal nobility for the grade of sub-lieutenant, was to add 
one abuse more to the military organization, and one of those that most 
keenly irritated the Third Estate; it was impossible to set the laws more 
.completely in opposition to the ideas and needs of that time. In the 
third place, the military forces of France comprised the militia, fixed by 
an ordinance of 1726 at the figure of sixty thousand men. Service in it 
was for six years, and was, moreover, purely nominal in time of peace. 
It was recruited by lot, and an infinite number of exemptions in favor 
of the city populations, the leading traders and artisans, the liberal pro- 
fessions, employees on the royal estates, domestics, and even laborers 
when they lived a little comfortably, made the burden fall only on the 
poorest portion of the rural population; it was a burden that was very 
much dreaded, and one of the most active causes of depopulation in the 
country districts to the advantage of the cities, which from that time caused 
universal complaint and alarm. 

Position of the Clergy in French Society. — The clergy was the 
first order ni the State. Inequality reigned in its ranks as throughout 
all society. The eighteen archbishoprics and one hundred and twenty- 
one bishoprics were for the most part endowed with magnificent revenues, 
further increased by the product of the abbeys which the king added 
to them; and almost all were reserved to families of the higher nobility. 
The lower clergy, on the contrary, were wretchedly poor, especially the 
pastors limited to the minimum allowance of five hundred livres, and 
their assistants, to two hundred. Payment was made by patrons through 
whose hands the parish moneys had to pass, but who no longer performed 
ecclesiastical functions there. The clergy had the usufruct of large landed 
estates, the value of which, often very much exaggerated, it is difficult 
lO determine; besides, they received perquisites on occasion of baptisms, 
marriages, burials, etc.; and they had the tithe, the most important source 
of their revenues; the most careful estimates made of its product towards 
the end of the old regime vary between sixty and one hundred and twenty- 
three millions. The tithe, rather variable as to rate and extent, was but 
very exceptionally the tenth of the crops — it may be said that generally' 
it was the thirteenth; and it was not collected on all the crops, but more 
especially on grains and wine. Tithes and Church property brought a 
considerable revenue, whose value party spirit has often misrepresented; 
without running much risk of being in serious error, we may adopt at 



448 Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 

least that given by Necker, one hundred and thirty millions. The clergy 
contributed largely to some of the public charges, but were exempted 
from some; they paid the gratuity, granted to the king in their assemblies, 
and borrowed its amount until they could collect from the lower clergy, 
on whom its constant increase came to be a very heavy burden. The 
foreign clergy were outside of this organization and paid the capitation 
and the twentieths. In ecclesiastical, as well as in civil society, charges 
were often in inverse proportion to abilities to pay; the whole benefit of 
the Church's financial independence was for the brilliant ecclesiastical 
staff that held the prelacies and the rich benefices; the lower clergy, over- 
burdened, dissatisfied, soured, wished for reforms and were to contribute 
to a considerable extent, at least in the beginning, to the success of the 
revolutionary movement. 

Reforms among the Clergy. — In society, the higher clergy occupied 
an eminent place, and generally deserved it. Some exceptions to this 
rule, remarkable precisely because they w^ere exceptions, such as Car- 
dinal de Rohan, bishop of Strasburg, Jarente, bishop of Orleans, and 
Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse, would not give a correct idea of what 
the French clergy were at the close of the old regime. The lower clergy 
also showed more piety and zeal. Mingling closely in the life of their 
parishioners, and still holding in many regions the monopoly of mental 
culture and knowledge, they exerted considerable influence. On the 
contrary, the regular clergy were declining. In 1768 a commission of 
bishops and State councillors had been established that united or sup- 
pressed a large number of religious houses; all those that had not in the 
community the required number of nine or fifteen members, as the case 
called for, were suppressed or doomed to extinction by being forbidden 
to receive novices; and the application of this rule made a large number 
of them disappear. Besides their pecuniary privileges, the clergy possessed 
their own jurisdiction, which they exercised in the episcopal courts, con- 
trolled whatever public instruction there then was, especially the primary 
schools, and kept the registers of the social relations, whence it followed 
that non-Catholics had no legal existence. 

Conditions among the Nobility. — The nobility comprised a rather 
small number of families of old extraction, and a much larger number 
of families ennobled on account of services in some public office, or even 
simply by the purchase of titles. The privileges of the nobility were 
considerable, such as exemption from personal poll-tax, favored treat- 
ment in the assessment of capitation and twentieths, privilege of juris- 



Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 449 

diction (amenable only to certain courts), and exemption from certain 
penalties. They held besides, if not by right at least in fact, all the higher 
State offices; from them alone or almost wholly were taken the officers 
of the army and the navy, the higher clergy (scarcely four or five bishops 
were peasants, and nineteen chapters of men and twenty-five of women 
were open only to persons of noble birth), and the parliaments, which, 
though made up of ennobled commoners, in the eighteenth century piti- 
lessly rejected every would-be purchaser not already provided with a 
patent of nobility. So as to maintain the splendor and fortune of the 
noble families, most of the time their property was not subjected to the 
rule of equal division between the heirs; by virtue of the law of primogeni- 
ture the eldest sometimes received half, sometimes two-thirds, of the 
paternal heritage. Lastly, manners much more than laws gave the nobil- 
ity a quite preponderant place in society. Yet these privileges did not 
keep the condition of the nobility from becoming more and more difficult. 
Living solely on the product of their patrimony and disdaining every lucra- 
tive occupation, they were constantly becoming poorer. The court or 
upper nobility, w-ho alone held the higher offices and shared in the king's 
favors, were themselves often embarrassed, because of the heavy expenses 
of court life and the decline of their domains, a forced consequence of 
their absenteeism. As regards the minor nobility, the moderateness of 
whose income compelled them to spend their whole lives in the provinces, 
they lived almost in poverty. On the other hand, they sometimes enjoyed 
a popularity which was not given to the absentee higher nobility; in Brit- 
tany and Vendee, where lived the largest proportion of these petty nobles 
obstinately attached to the soil of their province and sharing in the peasant's 
ideas and concerns, they exerted a most powerful influence. The serious 
consequences of these internal divisions in the nobility, as also of the 
special social condition of the western regions, were to be shown in the 
Revolution. 

The Third Estate. — It would be highly erroneous to believe that 
privileges existed only for the clergy and the nobility. Inequality, the 
essential rule under the old regime, existed within each order, as well as 
between the different orders, and nowhere were there more differences 
than in the legal condition of the tw^enty-five millions or more of peasants 
who formed the great bulk of the kingdom's population. As a general 
rule, the cities enjoyed important privileges. Many of them were exempt 
from poll taxes; some even procured for their citizens the valuable privilege 
of exempting from the poll domains of a certain extent. They knew nothing 
either of service — duty, or of the tithe, or of that very much dreaded bur- 

29 



450 Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 

den, the quartering of soldiers. The citizens of Paris were exempt from 
the law of freehold, imposed on all purchasers of noble fiefs, which made 
them almost equal to the nobility. The municipal offices of many cities 
conferred hereditary nobility. The upper citizens, who formed the higher 
class of the city populations, counsellors, attorneys, physicians, financiers, 
merchants, manufacturers, etc., especially enjoyed these privileges, and 
constituted a powerful, rich and active caste, superior to the nobility in 
wealth and intelligence, but inferior to it from the point of view of social 
prejudices, jealous of it and despised by it. 

Conditions in the Industrial World. — The lower class of the urban 
population, shopkeepers and artisans, was itself in a condition notably 
more enviable than that of the rustics. It owed these relative advantages 
especially to the industrial organization then in force, which depended 
on the system of corporations. This system did not cover the whole of 
the territory; but it was very widespread. The carrying on of each trade 
in a city constituted a monopoly, exclusively reserved to the corporation 
that enjoyed it. One entered this corporation through apprenticeship, 
the duration and organization of which were strictly determined; then 
he reached companionship, in which were united all the workmen follow- 
ing the trade; and in the corporation they were but an inferior and sub- 
ordinate element. Theoretically the completion of a "masterpiece'* 
and the payment of certain dues could open to the companion access to 
the mastership, or body of masters, v/ho alone formed the trade league, 
deliberated, could keep shop and work on their own account; but in fact 
the masterships had become hereditary and access to them w^as almost 
prohibited to anyone not a master's son. Juries or guards, elected by 
the masters or recruiting themselves, constituted the body of wardens, 
the supreme authority of the corporation, which fixed the statutes, deter- 
mined the number of apprentices to be received, administered the cor- 
poration's finances, applied the proof of "masterpiece," regulated the 
processes of fabrication, and made domiciliary visits to assure the carry- 
ing out of these regulations. The corporations had some advantage 
for those who formed a part of them; to a certain point they guaranteed 
the workman against enforced idleness; they were animated with a certain 
spirit of charity and commuriity of interests; to an extent, however, more 
limited than has often been claimed, they performed some duties of aid 
and protection. They upheld the Christian spirit in the working class; 
they procured more amicable relations than nowadays between employers 
and employed. But, on the other hand, the corporations presented most 
serious inconveniences; selfishness and routine directed their whole con- 



Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 451 

duct; they were opposed to the progress of fabrication, prevented produc- 
tion from increasing, and maintained high prices; above all, they limited 
the number of workmen, implacably keeping at a distance anyone who 
had not found means to take a place there, preventing him from getting 
work, and depriving him of the right to work, "which," as Turgot said, 
"is the first, most sacred and most imprescriptible of all forms of property." 
Their relations with one another were hostile; their constant concern 
V. as the shutting out of all competition from the field open to their activity, 
and encroaching as much as possible on the domain of others; whence 
interminable lawsuits that ate up the capital of the corporations and that 
were advantageous only to the lawyers; accordingly, when Turgot would 
decree liberty for work, they would be its bitterest adversaries. The 
contentions of pastry cooks and bakers, old-clothes dealers and tailors, 
shoemakers and soapmakers, etc., supported whole generations of attor- 
neys and counsellors. 

Agriculture, Its Bondage, and Manorial Rights.— As for the 
rural populations, they were in the lowest station of that graded society 
in which almost everybody but themselves had privileges. Serfdom still 
existed, as a rare exception, it is true; some regions of the Jura, and some 
localities in the centre were the only ones in which the French peasant 
had not yet come to enjoy civil liberty. With this exception, the rural 
classes were free of their persons. Frequently, even, they had attained 
to ownership. It is a fact now proven that the diffusion of peasant pro- 
prietorship in France far antedates the Revolution. That event increased 
the division of the soil; but there had already been a considerable number 
of small owners. This ownership, however, arising especially from con- 
cessions made in feudal times by the barons to tennants, in the possession 
of those holding it remained burdened with various dues to the lordship. 
That was what m.en called baronial rights, which were quite legitimate 
when they represented only a purchase price of old freely consented to 
by landlord and tenant, but whose origin was lost in the night of time, 
was no longer present to the memory of man, and whose lawfulness had 
consequently ceased to be understood. Besides, several of these manorial 
rights, more vexatious than profitable, arose from the abuses of feudal 
authority, and were consequently still more impatiently, borne. One can 
easily draw up a long list of the baronial rights; for in the different pro- 
vinces various terms designated almost identical dues, and the local cus- 
toms varied almost without end. There were money dues, like the quit- 
rent, the least burdensome of all, for the progressive diminution of the 
value of money in the course of ages made such a rent, important in the 



452 Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 

beginning, become exceedingly small; dues in kind, a portion of the harvest, 
vintage, etc.; dues in poultry; service-labor due to the lord; restrictions 
on the free marketing of provisions; baronial tolls, still rather numerous, 
in spite of the many edicts and decrees issued to abolish them; dues imposed 
on fairs and markets, milling and baking dues, etc. The most produc- 
tive of all the manorial dues was that on leases and sales, v^hich was gen- 
erally a twelfth of the selling price; and perhaps the most unpopular were 
those of hunting, coursing, and common pasturage, because they were 
encroachments on the rights of ownership and kept the owner from being 
master of his property. By the hunting right the lord was permitted to 
go where he wished on the lands of his barony, while the tenant was pro- 
hibited from fencing his holding, mowing his crops before a certain time, 
etc. Taken as a whole, the baronial rights were at one and the same time 
a small gain to the lord and a very heavy burden on the tenant, because 
they were complicated and vexatious, and gave rise to a multitude of 
disputes, and because their existence made itself felt on the occasion of 
every incident of rural life. They were heavy especially when the absentee 
lord farmed them out to some speculator who was not very careful to 
placate those owing them and was naturally inclined to get as much profit 
out of them as possible. It was men of this class, and with them the 
lavi-yers, who derived all the profit from that imperfect organization of 
property, the consequence of which was that the soil had two masters. 

Royal Dues — the Crowning Evil. — ^To the manorial rights were 
added the much heavier burden of the royal imposts, which lay with their 
whole distressing weight on the rural classes, whom no privilege relieved 
from the outrages of the fiscal exactions. The poll, the capitation, the 
twentieths, the royal service-dues, were to no one so oppressive as to the 
peasant. The tithe was the last straw to break his back. Efforts have 
been made to determine the exact amount of the various charges that 
burdened peasant property; but it is really impossible to make such a 
calculation. It is certain, however, that the part remaining to the owner 
after all charges had been paid was extremely precarious. Still more so 
was the lot of non-proprietors, tennants, and especially day laborers, 
rural artisans, etc., subject also to heavy charges, earning but small wages, 
and ever exposed to being out of work, in consequence of the general 
poverty and exhaustion. "The people," says Taine, alluding to the 
enormous amount of the burdens it had to bear, " resembled a man walking 
in a pond with water up to his chin; at the least depression of the bottom, 
at the slightest rise of the water, he loses his footing, sinks, and is suffo- 
cated. In vain did old charity and new humanity exert their ingenuity 



i 



Europe on the Eve of the French Revolution 453 

to come to its aid, the water was too deep. The pond's level must be 
lowered by a copious discharge of its contents. Until then the wretched 
people could breathe only at intervals, and it was constantly in danger 
of drowning." 

Therefore the essential vices of the old regime were the absence of 
guarantees, the indeterminate character of the government's powers, 
inequality in the condition of provinces and persons, disorder in admin- 
istration, pilfering in finances, a defective system of assessing and collecting 
taxes, a bad organization of the judiciary, servitude of trade and industry, 
and oppression of the lower classes. All these evils had been pointed 
out by the philosophers, economists especially had criticised them, and 
public opinion, obeying the impulse given by them and become extremely 
bold, impatiently awaited and was ready to demand their reform. Those 
institutions were exhausted, discredited; everybody felt more or less con- 
fusedly the necessity of a better political and social order. Nevertheless, 
if reforms in general were popular, each reform in particular was not so 
because it must necessarily injure very selfish and very exacting interests. 
The more opinion was disposed to clamor for them, the less prepared was 
it to accept their practical consequences. The privileged classes espec- 
ially, then the most ardent in declaiming against abuses, was by no means 
disposed to sacrifice them. From this disposition of men's minds it fol- 
lowed that nothing was more necessary, but also that nothing was more 
difficult, than to transform the old regime, and to make of that State, still 
distinctly marked with the impress of feudalism, a State united and regu- 
larly administered, in which civil equality would reign and in which liberty 
could have a certain share. That old order, common to almost the whole 
of Europe as we have described it for France, and subsisting partly in 
a portion even of the British empire until the beginning of the present 
generaton, was about to be swept away, but real liberty was not to come 
in its place, despite the example set by the new nation west of the Atlantic. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 



History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 



Divine Right and National Sovereignty. — In the Middle Ages the 
lawyers had taken up, for the purpose of combating feudahsm, the theses of 
the Roman lawyers concerning the absolute power of the prince; and the 
Church had sanctioned this doctrine; borrowed from the Oriental monarch- 
ies, as it has ever sanctioned all legitimate authority until abused, by mak- 
ing kings God's direct representatives on earth. But the other system, that 
of the sovereignty of the people, which had ruled the Greek, German, Celtic 
and Roman worlds, and which even Augustus had made the basis of his 
power, had never been completely forgotten and proscribed. Many a time 
had it been claimed — in France, for example, by the States General of 1484; 
in Spain by the Aragonese, who imposed so strict an oath on their kings; in 
England before the Tudors; under Henry VI by Chancellor Fortescue, 
who proclaimed that governments were constituted by the peoples and 
exist only for their advantage; under William III by Locke, who proclaimed 
the necessity of common consent; and in the eighteenth century by most 
writers. The oldest regime in the west was, then, that of national sov- 
ereignty; and the principle of Divine right, represented by James I and 
Louis XIV, had been a late comer against reason and history protested, 
accepting it only as an accidental political form which had had its utility 
and, for this reason, its temporary legitimacy. 

In the France of 1789 monarchy by right Divine, that is, without con- 
trol, found itself reduced by its blunders to being powerless to govern. 
Since royalty had ceased to live on the revenue of its domains, an axiom 
of pubHc law had been formulated to the effect that, for the common wel- 
fare of the State, the Third contributed of its means, the nobihty of its 
blood, the clergy of its prayers. But the court and parlor clergy did Ht- 
tle praying; the nobility no longer formed the whole army, but the Third 
had remained faithful to its functions — it was always paying, and more 
every year. Since its purse was the common treasury, it was inevitable that, 
the more spendthrift the monarchy would become, the more dependent 
would it make itself on the Third, and that a time would come when, weary 

454 



History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 455 

of paying, the Third would ask for an accounting. That time is called the 
Revolution of 1789. The court would have liked the States General to 
concern themselves only with affairs of finance, and, the deficit being 
covered and the debts paid, the deputies would be sent back to their homes. 
But France was suffering from two evils, the one financial, the other poht- 
ical, the deficit and the abuses we have partly described. To cure the 
former, savings and a new system of assessing taxes were necessary; to 
heal the latter required a reorganization of power. Royalty, which had 
been transformed so often since the Roman emperors, passing through the 
barbarian royalty of Clovis, the feudal royalty of Phihp Augustus, and the 
royalty by right Divine of Louis XIV, was about to undergo a fresh change, 
for in its last form it had given all that the country could expect of it, unity 
of territory and of command. It had organized France, but, with the 
immense developments of industry, commerce, science, public spirit and 
personal wealth, that France now had interests too complex and needs too 
numerous to leave itself at the mercy of a single man's omnipotence, with- 
out any guarantee against the unfortunate chances of royal births or the 
levity of incompetent ministers. 

Choosing the States General. — It is no wonder that, even under 
Louis XVI, there were frequent riotings, and that thousands of the peasants 
of the frontier provinces went and settled abroad. Others formed bands of 
counterfeiters and smugglers that even occasionally formed veritable armies 
requiring several regiments to suppress them. This condition helps to 
explain the excesses marking the beginnings of the Revolution. And the 
lamentable state of the finances, the result of the whole system of the old 
regime, as has been explained in the preceding chapter, made absolutely 
necessary a thorough reform of all the institutions hitherto in force; and as 
these institutions were equivalent to fundamental lavv^s, at least in every- 
thing regarding the privileges of the orders, the king had not the right to 
change them without appeahng to the nation. The convening of the States 
General, then, could not be avoided. For a long time past, moreover, the 
opinion of the reformers had been moving in this direction; the Abbe 
Mably had pointed to this measure as the first result to be obtained, a result 
from which all the others were to follow. None the less were the people 
thankful to Louis XVI for his resolution, and his popularity was greatly 
increased by it. Unfortunately neither the king nor his minister, Necker, 
suspected what they were going to do. Therefore from the beginning there 
were hesitations and uncertainties, and finally blunders under which the 
old monarchy succumbed. 

The elections took place by orders, and according to a very liberal 



456 History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 

system, the king having declared he meant "that his subjects should all be 
called to take united part in the elections of the deputies." The voting 
age was fixed at twenty-five years. The ecclesiastics and the nobles voted 
directly in their districts. As for the Third, there were two stages of the 
voting. To form part of the primary assembhes it sufficed to have been in- 
scribed on the roll of the contributions and domiciled in the locality. 
1 hough the government had sought to establish fixed rules on this point, 
by Regulations issued on December 27, 1788, and January 24, 1789, matters 
did not proceed as smoothly as expected, and all the nominations were not 
yet made when the States General assembled. There were disorders also, 
especially in Brittany, Dauphine and Provence. It had been decided that 
there would be 1,196 deputies and that the Third would have double rep- 
resentation. But neither the king nor Necker had dreamt of settling in 
advance the capital question of voting individually or by order. The 
same lack of foresight had made Versailles to be chosen as the meeting place* 
for the king did not wish to change his habits. 

From States General to Constituent Assembly. — On May 5, 1789, 
1,145 deputies assembled at Versailles, 561 for the clergy and the nobiHty 
and 584 for the Third Estate, which represented ninety-six per cent, of the 
population of probably almost twenty-seven miUions. The latter, then, 
had a majority of twenty-three votes, which became illusory if voting were 
done by rank, and not by individual. But to estabHsh the poHtical and 
social unity of the nation through equality before the law, and to guarantee 
it through liberty, was, in a word, the spirit of 'Eighty-nine'. Now this 
spirit had penetrated even into the privileged orders, several of whose 
members joined the deputies of the Third, who, assembled in the com- 
mon hall, proclaimed themselves the National Constituent Assembly, 
and on June 27 the union of the three orders was accompHshed. The 
court had wished to prevent this, at first by closing the place of the 
sessions, and then by having the king deliver a threatening speech the 
only effect of which was to make the deputies declare themselves inviolable. 
It had better hopes of military action, and an army of thirty thousand men, 
in which care was taken to put foreign regiments, was gathered around 
Paris and Versailles. The threat was quite obvious; but courage failed 
when it came to striking a great blow, and to that imprudent provocation 
another was added — ^Necker, the popular minister, was sent into exile 
(July 11). The greatest barons of the assembly, a Montmorency and a 
Clermont-Tonnerre, answered this defiance by renewing the Tennis Court 
oath that the representatives would not separate before having given a con- 
stitution to France. But Paris, where the Royal German made charges 




THE BATTLE OF CHATEAU-GOxVTIER. 

This fijjht occurred in 1792 during the "Reign of Terror" in France. 
After the French Revolution, when the peasants rose against the aristocrats 
in an overwiielming tide, embittered and made desperate by centuries of 
oppression, no quarter was shown to enemies, and the popular frenzy grew so 
rapidly that the revolutionists were split up into factions and anarchy prevailed. 




THE LAST LETTET^ HOME. 
This picture, taken in a hospital at Ladysmith, South Africa, shows a 
Ked Cross nurse writing at the dictation of a dying soldier a mess.ige to his 
dear ones at home. All modern nations have accepted the inviolability of the 
Ked Cross nurses, and the Red Cross badge which is seen on the woman's right 
arm, in recognition of their efforts to mitigate the horrors of war 



History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 457 

into the Tuileries gardens, became frightened and rushed to arms. Some 
collected against the troops encamped in the Champs Elysees, who retreated 
towards Versailles; others made a rush on the Bastile, captured it, and 
massacred its commandant; the mayor, the minister Foulon, and the lord 
heutenant Berthier were also murdered — the populace was beginning to 
enjoy bloodshed (July 14). The mod conduct of the court, whit^h, after 
having called the assembly, wished and did not wish to live with it, which 
threatened and did not act, which provoked and knew neither how to 
intimidate nor restrain, which had puerile hates and no resolution, had in 
two months made refoim deviate from its pacific ways. July 14, which 
circumstances and the state of minds explain, v/as none the less the first of 
those revolutionary days that were to demoralize the people by making it 
adopt the fatal habit of regarding power and law as a target at which one 
might always shoot. 

October Days, Emigration, and Paper Money. — "This is rebel- 
lion," Louis XVI exclaimed when he heard of the fall of the Bastile. "No, 
Sire," the Due de la Rochefaucauld answered, "it is revolution." On 
August 4, in fact, the Assembly abolished all the feudal rights and venality 
of offices; in September it voted the Declaration of Rights, established a 
single legislative chamber, and rejected the king's unlimited veto. The 
court then reverted to the idea of a sudden display of force; it was proposed 
to the king that he take refuge with De Bouille's army at Mctz, which 
would be the beginning of civil war. He staid at Versailles and called 
troops around him, once more enough to cause uneasiness, but too few to 
have nothing to dread. Famine was desolating France, and Paris was 
dying of hunger. On October 5, an army of women marched on Versailles, 
imagining they would have abundance if they brought the king back to 
Paris. National guards recently organized by I/a Fayette escorted them 
and quarreled in the palace courtyards with the body-guards. Several of 
the latter were slain, the queen, who had always been unpopular, was 
insulted^ the royal domicile was violated, and, in a last act of weakness, the 
king and the Assembly followed that mob to Paris, where both were to find 
themselves at the mercy of the populace. The success of the expedition to 
Versailles revealed to the suburban leaders that they could thereafter 
master everything, assembly or government, by a one day's demonstration. 
In the provinces also bloody scenes had been enacted. The peasants did 
not always remain satisfied with tearing up the feudal titles and tearing 
down the draw-bridges and the tovv^ers; occasionally also they beat down 
the baron. There was terror in the castles as there had been at the court. 
Already had the king's most imprudent advisers, his brother the count of 



458 History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 

Artols, the princes of Conde and Conti, the dukes of Bourbon and Enghien 
the PoUgnacs, etc., fled, leaving him alone amid a people whose every 
angry passion they were going to arouse and dri\ e to extremes by directing 
the foreigner's arms against the country. 

The Assembly, however, was pursuing the course of its labors. In 
the name of liberty, it freed from every shackle the dissident religions, the 
press, and industry; in the name of justice, it suppressed the law of primo- 
geniture; in the name of equality, it abolished nobility and titles, declared 
all Frenchmen admissible to public oflftces, no matter what their religion 
might be; and, for the divisions into provinces, substituted eighty-three 
departments. Money was leaving the kingdom with the emigrants and 
especially was being hidden from fear of riot and pillaging. The Assembly 
ordered the issuance of four hundred millions' worth of paper (assignats) 
hypothecated on the property of the clergy, which it ordered to be sold. 
At the same time monastic vows ceased to be recognized by the law, the 
cloisters were opened, and the parliaments were replaced by elective courts. 
As the sovereignty of the nation was proclaimed, men concluded therefrom 
that all powers were to come from the people. Therefore election was 
introduced everywhere. A deliberating council was set up in the depart- 
ments, the districts and the communes, side by side with the executive 
council, as side by side with the king arose the Legislative body. And 
some were already saying that a hereditary king was an inconsistency in 
that system. 

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy. — But the court did not and 
could not accept the Constitution. Conquered at Paris on July 14, and at 
Versailles on October 6, nobility fled to Coblentz, and from there openly 
conspired against France, while what of it had remained with the king was 
conspiring secretly. Louis, who had never had a will, let matters take 
their course; he publicly accepted the decrees of the Assembly, and secretly 
protested against the violence done to his rights — a double game that always 
brought misfortune. Yet there was a moment of universal confidence; 
this was on the occasion of the Federation feast given by the Parisians in 
the Champ de Mars, leveled for this purpose, to the deputies of the army 
and the eight-three departments. From November, 1789, until July, 1790, 
in the villages and the cities, the inhabitants in arms fraternized with the 
men of the neighboring city and village, all uniting in the joy of the recovered 
fatherland. These local federations became connected with one another 
and at last formed the great French federation, which, on July 14, 1790, 
sent one hundred thousand representatives to Paris. In their presence 
the kmg solemnly swore fidelity to the Constitution. But that feast had no 



History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 459 

morrow. Sullen hostilities were at once renewed between the court and 
the Assembly. The cause of this was the Civil Constitution of the Clergy 
which, applying to the Church the reform introduced into the State, sub- 
jected to election even pastors and bishops, and disturbed the whole eccles- 
iastical hierarchy as it then existed. On the part of the Assembly this was 
an abuse of power, for lay society had no competence in regulating the 
internal organization of religious society. The Pope condemned this inter- 
ference of the State in the discipline of the Church and forbade obedience 
to the new law. The king opposed it with his veto, which he withdrew 
only after a riotous demonstration of the mob. But the great majority 
of the clergy refused to take the oath to the Civil Constitution. Then 
schism entered into the Church of France; in its wake w^ere to come perse- 
cutions and a terrible war. 

The Constitution of 1791. — The king, shocked in his conscience by 
this decree, as he was in his affections by the measures which the Assembly 
compelled him to adopt against the emigration, no longer felt himself free. 
That freedom which he had not in the Tuileries he thought he would find 
by taking refuge in Buoille's camp, from which he could call Austria and 
Prussia to his aid. Arrested at Varennes during his flight (June 21, 1791), 
he was suspended from his functions by the Assembly, and as the people 
gathered in the Champ de Mars were clamoring for his abdication (July 17), 
Bailly ordered the red flag to be displayed and the mob to be fired upon. 
On September 14, the king, hitherto kept in the Tuileries as a prisoner, 
accepted the Constitution of 179 1, which created a single assembly entrusted 
with enacting laws, and left to the monarch, along with the executive power, 
the faculty of suspending the national will for four years (right of veto). 
The electoral body was divided into primary assemblies, which named the 
electors, and into electoral assemblies, which chose the deputies. The 
former comprised the active citizens, that is, men twenty-five years of age 
inscribed on the rolls of the National Guard and paying a direct contribu- 
tion equal to the local value of three days' work; the latter consisted of 
owners, lessees, or tenants of a property producing an income of at least 
from one hundred and fifty to two hundred francs. The active citizens 
were eligible. The Constituent Assembly worthily came to an end with 
words of liberty and harmony, words by no means in keeping with its 
recent tyranny over the Church. It proclaimed a general amnesty, sup- 
pressed the shackles placed on circulation, and, so as to call the emigrants 
back to their country, wiped out all the exception laws; but they did not heed 
the invitation. Among its members who had distinguished themselves 
were Mounier, Malouet, Barnave, the Lameths, Cazales, Maury, Duport, 



460 History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 

Sieves, and especially Mirabeau, who, had he lived, might perhaps have 
reconciled royalty and the Revolution. It is to Mirabeau we owe this 
fine formula of the new era: "Law is the sovereign of the world." As the 
representative of justice it was not to be enthroned in Paris. 

The Legislative Assembly — the Revolution Abroad. — The Con- 
stituent had forbidden the election of its members to the new parliament. 
This was an imprudent disinterestedness, for liberty needed the veterans 
of the Revolution to hold its flag high and firmly over the superstitious 
adorers of the past and the fierce dreamers of the future, so as to prepare the 
way for the peaceful triumph of that new state of minds and institutions 
which has so often been disturbed and compromised by the regrets of the 
one and the temerity of the other class. In spite of everything, the Constit- 
uent has remained the mother of French liberties and of the French folly 
of intermeddling with religion, as most of its ideas have reappeared in all 
of France's constitutions, especially that under which the country is now 
both ruled and misruled. The Legislative Assembly, so colorless between 
its two great and terrible sisters, the Constituent and the Convention, began 
its sessions on October i, 1791, and ended them on September 21, 1792. 
Its leaders, the Girondists: Brissot, Petion, Vergniaud, Gensonne, Ducos, 
Isnard, Valaze, etc., strove to overthrow royalty, but by leaving to the 
extreme parties, the initiative of the republic, which these parties made 
bloody, and which perhaps they themselves would have made moderate. 

To the internal difficulties which the Constituent had undergone were 
added, for the Legislative, embarrassments from abroad. There the 
Revolution had awakened many echoes which repeated its principles and 
hopes. In Belgium, in Holland, all along the Rhine and in the heart of 
Germany, even in England and as far as Russia, it had appeared as a prom- 
ise of deliverance. The French ambassador to the czar wrote in his 
memoirs: "Thoygh the Bastile was not assuredly a menace to anyone in 
St. Petersburg, yet I could not express the enthusiasm aroused among 
merchants, traders, the whole middle class and a few young men of a higher 
type, by the fall of that State prison and the first triumph of a stormy liberty. 
Frenchmen, Russians, Germans, Englishmen, Danes, Dutchmen, all, in 
the streets, congratulated one another, embraced as if thev had been freed 
from a too heavy chain weighing on them." The Swiss historian, Johann 
von Miiller, saw the will of Providence in that victory. Philosophers and 
poets, Kant and Fichte, Schiller and Goethe, then thought in like manner. 
The last named said, on the evening of Valmy: "At this place and on this 
day begins a new era for the world." Thus, in those first moments, the 
peoples were with France, because they understood it was for them also 



History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 461 

that Mirabeau and his colleagues had written at Versailles the new charter 
of society. 

The First Coalition against France. — But the princes were so much 
the more irritated against that revolution which threatened not to confine 
itself, like the English revolution of 1688, within the boundaries of the 
country in which it had broken out. Already in January, 1 791, the emperor 
of Germany had haughtily demanded the maintenance of their feudal 
rights for the German princes owning lands in Alsace, Lorraine and Tranche 
Comte. The emigrants found every facility for gathering troops at Cob- 
lentz and Worms; and the count of Artois, as the king acknowledged, 
entered into negotiations with the emperor which ended in a secret agree- 
ment to the effect that the sovereigns of Austria, Prussia, Piedmont, Spain, 
and even the aristocratic governments of Switzerland pledged themselves 
to send one hundred thousand men to the frontiers of the kingdom (May, 
1791). This agreement led to the king's flight (June 20), and the Constit- 
uent, which had a presentiment but no knowledge of it, answered by 
voting the levy of three hundred thousand national guards to defend the 
territory. At that period the war in which the northern powers had 
engaged — those of the Swedes against the Russians, the Russians against 
the Turks, the Turks against the Austrians, the Austrians against the Bel- 
gians — and the uneasiness caused to Prussia by all these armaments made 
around it, were nearing their end. The Brabant insurrection had closed 
to the advantage of Austria, but left in the country, it is true, a violent 
hatred of foreign domination, and the treaty of Szistowa with the Turks 
(August 4), giving the emperor the free disposal of his forces, he had at 
Pilnitz with the king of Prussia an interview at which a plan was decided upon 
for the invasion of France and the restoration of Louis XVI (August 27, 
1 791). The Legislative spoke out boldly to these monarchs; it invited the 
king to answer them: "If the princes of Germany continue to favor pre- 
parations aimed against the French, the French will bring to them, not 
tword and flame, but liberty. It is for them to calculate what may be the 
consequences of this reawakening of the nations" (November). The king 
transmitted to the powers the invitation to withdraw the troops from the 
French frontiers; they upheld "the justice of the league of sovereigns united 
for the safety and honor of crowns," and the king of Sweden, Gustav^us II, 
off^ered to put himself at the head of a sort of monarchical crusade against 
the Revolutionists. Thus the struggle between the two principles that 
had been begun at Versailles and continued at Paris, between the king and 
the assembly, was, after the defeat of the old law in France, about to be 
continued on the frontier, between France and Europe. The princes who. 



462 History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 

following the example of the French kings, had seized absolute power did 
not want to abandon it and formed a coalition "for the safety of crowns" 
against the common enemy, the political reform which the States General 
had inaugurated. They were, then, about to begin that terrible twenty- 
three years' war which was to be to them, except on its closing day, a long 
series of diasters, but which excited passions at the same time as heroism, 
and which covered France with blood as well as glory. 

The Paris Commune and Its Massacres. — ^The first decrees of the 
Assembly after the declaration of Pilnitz were aimed at the emigrants and 
the nonjuring priests, who by their refusal to take the civic oath became the 
cause of troubles in Vendee and Brittany. At first the king did not want 
to sanction these decrees. The declaration of war which he made against 
Austria (April 20, 1792) could not dispel the tear of secret negotiations 
between the court and the enemy; and the rout of the French troops at 
Quievrain made the outcry of treason rise. The constitutionalists, friends 
of the king, who had at first held preponderance in the Assembly, were 
unable to prevail in the Paris municipal council. A Girondist, Petion, was 
chosen as mayor in preference to LaFayette. From that time the most 
violent motions against royalty went out from the city hall, were repeated 
and exaggerated in the famous clubs of the Jacobins and the Cordeliers, 
and thence spread among the people through the myriad voices of the press, 
especially Marat's journal, for Marat was beginning his bloodthirsty 
dictatorship. The multitude did not long resist that appeal, which seemed 
to be justified by the threats from abroad and the insufficiency of the meas- 
ures adopted for defending the territory. On June 20 the Tuileries was 
invaded, and the king, insulted to his face, was compelled to don the red 
cap. In vain did La Fayette demand reparation for that violation of the 
royal domicile. He himself, proscribed two months later, was compelled 
to leave his army and his country. He had been the last hope of the con- 
stitutionalists; his flight announced the triumph of the republicans. 

The insolent manifesto of the duke of Brunswick, who, on invading 
France, threatened with death all the inhabitants caught with arms in their 
hands (July 25), and the declaration made by the Assembly that the country 
was in danger, gave a fresh impulse to popular excitement. France answered 
the patriotic appeal of Paris; but with the cries of hatred against the foreigner 
were mingled cries of wrath against the court, the enemies' secret ally. 
On August 10, the republicans renewed the effort that had failed on June 20. 
Marseillese and Breton volunteers, the people of the suburbs and several 
sections of the National Guard, attacked the palace, whose defenders were 
massacred. The king took refuge with the Assembly, which, associating 



History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 463 

with the mob, declared him suspended from his rights, and had him confined 
in the Temple with the whole royal family. Four thousand persons had 
perished. The constitution having been torn up, a Convention was called 
to draft a new constitution. Before it assembled, and when the Legislative 
had completely lost the little authority left to it by the approach of its end, 
a great crime terrified France. The Paris prisons were forced between 
September 2 and 5, and nine hundred and sixty-six prisoners were murdered. 
Danton had uttered these fateful words: "The royalists must be inspired 
with dread; boldness, boldness, and more boldness!" A small number of 
cut-throats, hired by the Commune, had carried out that threat which the 
terrified Assembly and middle class had permitted to be executed. 

Valmy, the Convention, and the King's Death.— Hostilities, 
however, had begun. The time had been well chosen by the powers. All 
their wars in the North and East had come to an end; England herself had 
just imposed peace on Tippu Sahib with the loss of half of his States. 
France was threatened on three sides — on the north by the Austrians, on the 
Moselle by the Prussians, and towards the Alps by the king of Sardinia. 
The inexperience of the troops, distrust among the officers and between 
them and the soldiers at first caused in the northern army disorders that 
were soon corrected by the capture of several cities. Savoy and Nice were 
conquered; the Prussians, who had entered Champagne, were met by 
Dumouriez at Valmy and driven back on the Rhine, where Custine, assum- 
ing the offensive, captured Speyer, Worms and Mayence, whose inhabitants 
saw in the French soldiers liberators rather than enemies. Prussia's 
attention and strength were then once more attracted towards Poland; in 
that unhappy country it wished to complete its work of spoliation rather 
than engage in a chivalrous adventure for the deliverance of the queen of 
France. The Austrians, more interested in defending a princess of their 
blood, had inaugurated at Lille the savage war which Prussia was to renew 
in 1870. Instead of beleaguering the city, they bombarded it behind the 
ramparts and in six days burned four hundred and fifty houses; but they 
were compelled to raise the siege, and with the Valmy army Dumouriez 
won the battle of Jemmapes (November 6), which gave him the Netherlands. 

At its first session the Convention abolished royalty and proclaimed 
the republic. On December 3 it decided that Louis XVI would be judged 
by it, in violation of the constitution, which declared the king inviolable 
and imposed no penalty on him but deposition. Louis had been condemned 
in advance. The venerable Malesherbes asked and obtained the honor of 
defending his former master. A young lawyer, Deseze, spoke. "In you 
I seek judges," he said, "and I see only accusers." He spoke the truth. 



464 History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 

The situation was extreme; England was menacing; the Austrians were 
about to make greater efforts, and a coaHtion of all Europe was imminent. 
"Let us throw a king's head at them as a defiance!" Danton exclaimed. 
Louis ascended the scaffold on January 21, 1793. It had been thought 
that the royal head in falling would create an unfathomable abyss between 
old France and new France; and it was less the king than royalty that was 
decapitated. When signing Louis's doom Carnot had shed tears. Thus 
did the fateful doctrine of the public safety add one more crime to histor)^ 
Once more had it been forgotten that safety comes from big hearts, and 
not from the executioner. 

The Reign of Terror. — On hearing of Louis XVFs death the powers, 
still hesitating, declared against France, and all its frontiers were menaced, 
while in Brittany and Vendee civil war was enkindled. The Convention 
made headway everywhere. Carnot organized fourteen armies, and a 
revolutionary tribunal was created that, passing judgment without appeal, 
decreed the death penalty for a word, a regret, or the mere name one bore 
(March 10, 1793). The desertion of Dumouriez, who abandoned his army 
and passed over to the Austrian camp (April 4, 1793), increased fears and 
caused the revolutionary measures to be multiplied. So that none of those 
who were called traitors could escape, the Convention renounced the 
inviolability of its members; and, itself abdicating a part of its rights, it 
created within its own ranks a Committee of Public Safety which was 
invested with the executive power. Suspicion, in fact, was everywhere. 
Robespierre firmly believed that the Girondists wished to dismember 
France and lay it open to the foreigner; the Girondists believed that Marat, 
Robespierre and Danton wanted to make the duke of Orleans king, then 
assassinate him, and found a triumvirate, from which Danton would drive 
his two colleagues so as to reign alone. Each in good faith attributed the 
most absurd designs to his adversaries. Whence arose distrusts, that 
terrible counselor fear, and the axe hung over and falling upon every head. 
This system has a name. The Terror — terror among the executioners as 
well as amid victims, and accordingly the more pitiless. The first decree 
was soon carried into execution. The Mountainers, whose leaders were 
Marat, Danton and Robespierre, had a decree of accusation issued against 
thirty-one Girondists (June 2), several of whom, escaping from searches, 
tried to raise rebellion in the departments. Then Caen, Bordeaux, Lyons, 
Marseilles, and several cities of the South declared against the Convention; 
Toulon was turned over to the English along with the whole Mediterranean 
fleet; Conde and Valenciennes fell into the enemy's hands; Mayence, 
occupied by French troops, capitulated; in north and south the enemy 



History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 465 

crossed the frontiers. At the same time the Vendeans were everywhere 
victorious and another enemy, a frightful famine, provoked internal disor- 
ganization. 

Self-Destruction of the Terror.— The cause of the Revolution, 
defended by less than thirty departments, seemed lost; the Convention 
saved it by displaying a savage energy. Merlin drafted the suspects' law, 
which crowded the prisons with over three hundred thousand individuals; 
and Barere declared, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety: "The 
Republic is now but a great city besieged — France must become more than 
a vast camp. All ages are called upon by the Fatherland to defend liberty; 
the young men will do the fighting, the married men will forge the weapons; 
the women will make the soldiers' clothes and tents; the children will do 
over the old linen, and the old men will have themselves carried to the 
public places to arouse courage." Twelve hundred thousand men were 
set on foot. Bordeaux and Lyons returned to duty. Bonaparte, then an 
artillery captain, recovered Toulon; the Vendeans were driven from the 
gates of Nantes, and Jourdan, put at the head of the chief army, held the 
coalitionists in check. So many efforts v/ere not made without terrible 
internal sufferings. The nobles and the priests, proscribed under the name 
of suspects, perished in multitudes on the scaffolds erected in all the cities. 
Carrier, Freron, Collot-d' Herbois and Barras showed themselves pitiless. 
The assassination of Marat by Charlotte Corday, who in killing him thought 
she would kill the Terror (July 13), made it more implacable. Queen 
Marie Antoinette, her sister-in-law Madame Elizabeth, Bailly, the Giron- 
dist leaders, the duke of Orleans, General Custine, Madame Roland, 
Lavoisier, Malesherbes, and a myriad of others scarcely less illustrious had 
their heads chopped off. Then the Mountainers began to destroy one 
another. Robespierre and Saint-Just, supported by the powerful society 
of the Jacobins, first proscribed the hideous anarchists of Hebert's party, 
and after them Camille Desmoulins and Danton, who spoke of indulgence. 
Peace could not yet reign among those of the Mountainers who were left. 
Several of the most ferocious proconsuls whom Robespierre threatened, 
and some members of the Committees whose dictatorship he wished to 
break to his own advantage, such as Fouche, Tallien, Carrier, Billaud- 
Varennes, Collot-d' Herbois, Vadier, Amar, etc., made 9 Thermidor an 
ever famous day by decreeing accusation against Robespierre, Couthon, 
Saint-Just, and two other representatives, Labas and the younger Robes- 
pierre, who asked to share their fate. One hundred of their friends 
perished with them. Two days earlier this revolution would have saved 
the neck of the noble young Andre Chenier (July 27, 1794). 

30 



466 History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 

Some of the men who had overthrown Robespierre were the very same 
who had driven the Terror to its last limits. But such was the force of 
public opinion that they were compelled to appear to have conquered only 
for the sake of moderation. Thus did the fall of Robespierre become the 
signal for a reaction that, in spite of frightful excesses, yet gave France a 
breathing spell. The guillotine ceased to be the great means of government; 
and if parties for a long time yet continued to proscribe one another, at 
least the people were no longer called upon to witness the hideous spectacle 
of thirty or forty heads falling every day under the knife. During the four 
hundred and twenty days the Terror had lasted 2,669 condemnations had 
been decreed by the revolutionary tribunal and earned mto execution. 
Between July 10 and 27 1,400 persons had perished at Paris. But how 
are we to count Couthon's and Collot-d' Herbois's victims at Lyons, Lebon*s 
at Arras, Carrier's at Nantes, Freron's at Toulouse and Marseilles, Tallien's 
at Bordeaux, etc. ? 

Military Campaigns, 1793- 1795. — After the death of Louis XVI the 
coalition of Austria, Prussia and Piedmont had been enlarged by the acces- 
sion of England, Spain, Naples, Holland, Portugal, and some of the second- 
ary German States. It was as it were a universal war against France, as 
only remoteness kept Russia for the time being from joining in the coalition; 
and France's northern allies, Denmark and Sweden, alone resolutely upheld 
the principle of free navigation for neutrals (agreement of March 27, 1794). 
Two things saved France, namely, the affairs of Poland, which occupied 
the three despoiling powers (i 793-5)* and the war of sieges which the 
coalitionists substituted for that of invasion. The latter, answering the 
object of the league, which was the crushing of the Revolution, was a war 
of principles that could be understood; the other was but a war of interests 
and covetousness, enlargement of territory at the expense of France. But 
while the coalitionists were losing three months before Conde, Valenciennes 
and Mayence, and another month preparing to besiege Dunkirk and other 
frontier towns, the French volunteers were trained, the armies organized, 
and the generals getting experience while showing boldness. At the close 
of August, 1793, the condition of France, invaded on every side and rent 
by internal dissensions, seemed desperate; but before the end of December, 
the French were everywhere victorious. Houchard had beaten the English 
at Honschoote and Jourdan the Austrians at Wattignies; Bonaparte had 
recovered Toulon; Hoche the lines of Wissenburg; and the great Vendean 
war was coming to an end. A few months afterwards victory at Fleurus 
gave the Netherlands to France; the Spaniards were driven back beyond the 
Pyrenees, the Piedmontese beyond the Alps, the imperialists and the Prus- 



History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 467 

s'lans beyond the Rhine, and during the winter Pichegru penetrated into 
Holland. These reverses led two powers to leave the coalition, namely, 
Spain, suffering from a weak government, and Prussia, needing rest to 
digest its prey, its share of dismembered Poland. Holland now changed 
sides and became France's ally only to lose colonies and marts to England, 
which held the mastery of the seas through the aid of ships loaned by Russia./ 
On June i, 1794, a French fleet of twenty-six vessels manned by peasants- 
attacked an English fleet of thirty-eight sail so as to protect an immense 
convoy of wheat. The convoy passed and saved a la.rge section of France 
from famine, but the fleet w^as defeated, losing seven vessels. Martinique, 
Guadeloupe, an«d even Corsica, which could not be defended, were seized 
by the English. 

Another Constitution—Bonaparte^s Opportunity.— The Conven- 
tion, having emerged victorious from the riotings that followed 9 Thermidor, 
abolished the democratic constitution of 1793, which had not yet been put 
into practice, and attributed the legislative power to two councils, that of 
the Five Hundred and that of the Elders, and the executive power to a 
Directory consisting of five members graded as to length of term so that 
one retired every year. The Convention had restored union everywhere. 
Now everything was divided. The legislative power was about to have 
two heads, not too many for good counsel, but the executive power was to 
have five, which is bad for action. Men thus hoped to escape dictatorship 
and to establish a moderate republic; they got only a weak and anarchical 
semblance of government. The primary assemblies accepted the consti- 
tutional act; but disturbances broke out in Paris. The royalists, so often 
the victims of rioting, made the mistake of having recourse to it in their turn. 
They drew with them several sections of the National Guard, who marched in 
arms on the Convention. Barras, whom the Assembly had appointed 
commander-in-chief, entrusted the defence of it to Bonaparte. His 
work on 13 Vendemiaire assured the young officer's triumph and fortune — 
his able tactics and strategy reduced superiority of numbers to naught 
(October 5, 1795). On 4 Brumaire following, the Convention declared 
its mission ended (October 26). 

Amid these dissensions and victories the Convention had pursued its 
political and social reforms. So as to strengthen the unity of France, it 
had decreed a national education and the creation of the Normal School, 
central schools (lycees), schools of law, medicine and the veterinary art, 
primary schools, the Conservatory of Arts and Trades, chairs of living 
languages, the Bureau of Longitudes, the Conservatory of Music, the 
Institute, the Museum of Natural History, and by the metric system had 



468 History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 

established unity of weights and measures. By the sale of the national 
property it had given ownership to quite a number of men; and, by creating 
the Great Book of the public debt, it had founded State Credit. The 
invention of the aerial telegraph enabled the orders of the central government 
to be carried rapidly to the frontiers, and the establishment of museums 
revived taste for the arts. The Convention also wished the invalid and the 
foundling to be taken and cared for by the State, and the last decree of those 
terrible lawmakers ordered the abolition of the death penalty after general 
peace. 

France under the Directory. — Before separating, the Convention 
had taken pains to decree that two-thirds of the members of the council of 
Elders and of that of the Five Hundred would be chosen from among the 
Conventional. These had therefore the majority in the councils; they 
elected as Directors five regicides, namely, Lareveillere-Lepeaux, Carnot, 
Rewbell, Letourneur and Barras. The five members of the new govern- 
ment took up their quarters in the Luxembourg palace. The situation 
was a difficult one. The elective councils that were to administer the 
departments, cantons and communes did nothing or did badly, and this 
paralysis of authority compromised all of the country's interests. The 
Treasury was empty; the assignats (paper currency) had fallen into com- 
plete discredit; commerce and industry no longer existed; the French 
armies were short of provisions, clothing, and even munitions. But three 
years of such a war had trained the soldiers and the generals. Moreau 
commanded the army of the Rhine, Jourdan that of Sambre-et-Meuse; 
Hoche was looking after the defence of the ocean shores against the English 
and for the pacifying of Brittany and Vendee. In the last place, he who 
was to eclipse them all, Bonaparte, then twenty-seven years old, had, on 13 
Vendemiaire, won the command of the interior army, soon afterwards to 
exchange it for that of the army of Italy. 

Bonaparte's First Campaigns in Italy. — ^When he took his place at 
its head, he found it encamped in the Alps, where it was struggling amid 
difficulties against the Sardinian troops, while the Austrians were threaten- 
ing Genoa and marching towards the Var. With the glance of genius 
Bonaparte chose his battlefield. Instead of wasting his strength amid 
barren rocks where heavy blows could not be struck, he turned the Alps, 
whose passage he could not force, by that clever manoeuvre placed himself 
between the Austrians and the Piedmontese, cut them off and beat them in 
succession, drove the former back into the Apennines and the latter upon 
their capital, and then pressed upon the Sardinian army at the point of the 



History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 469 

bayonet until it laid down its arms. Rid of one enemy, he turned on the 
other. In vain did Beaulieu, frightened at the victories of Montenotte 
(April 11), Millesimo (14), Dego (15) and Mondovi (22), fall back in hot 
haste; Bonaparte followed, overtook and crushed him. At the Lodi bridge 
the Austrians wished to stop him with the fire of a formidable artillery; 
his soldiers beat them back (May 10). Beaulieu was succeeded by Worm- 
ser, Austria's best general. After the first army came a second, more 
numerous and better trained; but it disappeared like the other (victories 
of Lonato and Castiglione, August 3 and 5; Bassano, September 8). Alvinzi, 
who replaced Wormser, was defeated at Arcole (November, 1796) and at 
Rivoli (January, 1797). The archduke Charles was no more fortunate. 
All of Austria's armies and generals were broken against less than forty 
thousand men led by a general twenty-eight years old. On the banner 
which the Directory gave to the army of Italy these words were inscribed: 
"It has captured one hundred and fifty thousand prisoners, seventy flags, 
five hundred and fifty pieces of siege artillery, six hundred field pieces, 
five ship crews, nine vessels, twelve frigates, twelve sloops of war, eighteen 
galleys, given liberty to the peoples of northern Italy, sent to Paris the 
masterpieces of Michael Angelo, Guerchino, Titian, Paolo Veronese, 
Correggio, Albano, Carraccio, Rafaele, etc., triumphed in eighteen pitched 
battles, and fought sixty-seven engagements." During these marvelous 
campaigns in Italy Jourdan had let himself be beaten by the archduke 
Charles at Wiirzburg; and Moreau, uncovered, had had to withdraw to 
Alsace, a retreat as glorious as a victory; for he had spent forty days in 
making a hundred leagues without suflPering any loss. Moreover, the army 
of Italy had won for France the great river boundary that for nearly a 
thousand years had separated Gaul from Germany; the treaty of Campo 
Formio, signed by Bonaparte on October 17, 1797, made the Rhine the 
northeastern frontier of France. Beyond the Alps France had a devoted 
ally in the new Cisalpine Republic founded in Lombardy. 

Bonaparte in Egypt — Victory of Zurich. — Austria had laid down 
arms; but the English could not consent to letting France retain so many 
conquests. The w^ar, then, was continued with them. To strike them in 
the heart by destroying their commerce, the Directory undertook an ex- 
pedition to Egypt, which Bonaparte led. From the banks of the Nile he 
hoped to attack England in India and overthrow its empire there. In the 
battles of the Pyramids (July 21, 1798) and of Mount Tabor (April 16, 1799) 
he scattered the Mamelukes and the Turks. But the destruction of the 
French fleet at Aboukir (August 12, 1798), depriving him of siege artillery, 
made him fail at Acre (May 20, 1799). From that time, shut up in Egypt, 



47° History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 

he could do nothing great. After having exterminated another Turkish 
army at Aboukir (July 25, 1799), he abandoned his conquest to go and 
offer his sword and his genius to France. During his absence the weakness 
of the Directory had brought about the loss of all the fruits of the treaty of 
Campo Formio. The spectacle of France's internal disorganization, the 
absence of Bonaparte and that of the country's best army, lost in the sands 
of Egypt, led the continental powers to listen to Pitt's appeal. In May, 
1798, the great minister began the formation of a second coalition against 
France. It was made up of Russia, where Paul had recently succeeded 
Catharine II, a part of Germany subject to Austrian influence, the emperor, 
who could not be consoled for the loss of the Milanese, and of Naples, 
Piedmont and Turkey, whose old alliance with France the Egyptian 
expedition had broken. The Barbary States themselves offered their aid 
against those who seemed to have become the enemies of the Crescent. 
France, without money or trade, having lost the patriotic ardor of '93 and 
not having as yet the military enthusiasm and strong organization of the 
empire, found itself exposed to the most serious dangers. The first opera- 
tions were successful. Joubert drove the king of Sardinia from Turin, 
and at Naples Championnet proclaimed the Parthenopian Republic; but 
the coalition had three hundred and sixty thousand soldiers against one 
hundred and seventy thousand French. An Anglo-Russian army landed 
in Holland, the archduke Charles defeated Jourdan at Stockach and 
besieged Kehl opposite Strasburg. Scherer at Magnano (April 5, 1799), 
Macdonald at the Trebia (June 17-19), and Joubert at Novi (August 15), 
lost Italy invaded by one hundred thousand Austro-Russians. But Mas- 
sena's victory at Zurich (September 25, 1799) and that of Brune at Bergen 
(September 19) saved France from an invasion. 

Internal Anarchy and Military Revolution. — At home the struggle 
between parties had been renewed with great activity, but, fortunately, with 
less tragic results. Since 9 Thermidor the Revolution, deviating from its 
course, seemed inclined to retrace its steps, for multitudes of emigrants 
were returning, and royalists. were to be seen everywhere. The condemna- 
tion of a few extremist republicans (such as Babeuf), who had been preach- 
ing the abolition of property, and the success of the Whites in the elections 
of the year V, which gave the monarchists the majority in the Councils, 
increased their hopes. The pretender Louis XVIII, brother of Louis XVI, 
believing he was on the point of being recalled, was already laying down 
his conditions. The parliament's bold stroke that was in preparation 
was met by summary action on the part of the government and the army. 
The Directory purged itself by proscribing two of its own members, Carnot. 



History's Deepest and Widest Gulf 471 

who did not want violence to be used against the royahsts, and Barthelemy, 
who favored them, and it had fifty-three members of the two Councils 
condemned to deportation. Among these men were Pichegru, Barbe- 
Marbois (who had been consul general in the United States and who is the 
author of a History of Louisiana), Boissy-d'Anglas, Portalis and Camille 
Jordan (i8 Fructidor or September 4, 1797). On 22 Floreal (May 11, 1798) 
there was another State surprise, but this time against the deputies called 
Patriots, whose election was set aside. The Corps Legislatif, hit by the 
Directory, in its turn struck at the latter on 30 Prairial (June 18, 1799), 
when three Directors were compelled to resign. In the Councils, in Paris 
and in the armies, men spoke openly of overthrowing that constitution of 
the year III which, by dividing the executive power, reduced it to being by 
turns weak or violent, but never calmly and durably strong. Accordingly, 
weary of the anarchy in which a government without strength or dignity 
was letting it live, France accepted Bonaparte as the head of its government 
when he returned from the Orient with the prestige he had won by his 
fresh victories. One of the Directors, Sieyes, who at last hoped to force 
acceptance of a plan of constitution he had long been meditating, thought 
he had found a useful instrument in the general. Bonaparte let him nurse 
his hopes and carried out the military revolution of 18 Brumaire (November 
9, 1799), which overthrew the Directory and created the Consulate. The 
18 Brumaire was another of those famous days, that is, the date of a high- 
handed act. What lessons given to the people by those perpetual insur- 
rections — of the court against the Assembly, of the suburbs against the Tuil- 
eries, of the Commune against the Convention, of the Directory against the 
Councils, and of the Councils against the Directory! Royalists and re- 
publicans, generals and magistrates, priests and laymen had in turn had 
recourse during ten years to conspiracies or to arms. How could citizens 
be trained to respect for the law and attention to wise modification of it 
instead of tearing it to tatters angrily, when it seemed as if nothing could 
now move but by violent jerks ? 



CHAPTER XXIX 



Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 



Organization of the Consulate. — No one then dreamt of the scourg- 
ing which this change had in store for Europe and for France, that a fren- 
zied JuHus Caesar was lurking behind the mask of the popular young hero 
of Italy and of Egypt. A chapter was copied from Roman history when, 
to make the central power stronger, for the five-headed Directory a tri- 
umvirate was substituted that was to hold office for ten years. Its mem- 
bers, Bonaparte, Sieyes and Roger-Ducos, were called Consuls. From 
the first day Sieyes saw that he had taken to himself a master; Bonaparte 
rejected his plans and had a constitution adopted known as that of the 
year VIII, which gave to him, under the title of First Consul, the most 
important prerogatives of authority. His two new colleagues, Camba- 
ceres and Lebrun, had only a consulting voice. According to the new 
constitution, the laws prepared at the consuls' orders by the revocable 
members of the Council of State were discussed by the Tribunate and 
adopted or rejected by the Corps Legislatif. On the laws adopted or to be 
adopted, the abuses to be corrected, the amendments to be introduced, 
etc., the Tribunate expressed views which the government took or did 
not take into consideration. When a law, after examination by the Tri- 
bunes, was brought before the Corps Legislatif, three orators of the Tri- 
bunate presented themselves there either to support it or to oppose it against 
three Councillors of State, government orators. No member of the Corps 
Legislatif had the right to take part in the debate — they voted in silence. 
The Conservative Senate, a body composed of eighty members appointed 
for fife, had as its mission supervision over the maintenance of the con- 
stitution, watching all acts contrary to the organic law, and choosing from 
the national Ust the members of the Tribunate and the Corps Legislatif. 
All Frenchmen fully twenty-one years old inscribed on the public registers 
were electors. The electors of each communal district (arrondissement) 
chose one man out of every ten of themselves to draw up a list of communal 
notabilities; and it was from that list the First Consul took the public 
officeholders of the arrondissement. The citizens inscribed on the com- 
472 



Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 473 

munal list named one for every ten to form the departmental list, from 
which the First Consul chose the department office-holders. The elect of 
the departmental list formed the national Hst out of one-tenth of them- 
selves. All who were comprised in it could be appointed to the national 
public offices. It was from this third list of notabilities that the Senate was 
to take the members of the Tribunate and the Corps Legislatif. The 
assemblies which discussed and voted upon the laws were, then, only the 
product of an election with four stages. 

Reforms Effected by Bonaparte. — Bonaparte had hitherto been 
known only as a great general; now he was to show himself fully as great 
an administrator, though unfortunately he based his code of laws not on 
ancient Roman liberties, but on the absolutist theories of the Theodosian 
and Justinian codes. He gave his first attention to the restoration of order. 
Himself proclaiming forgetfulness of the past and reconciliation of parties, 
he declared the hitherto nobles admissible to the offices, recalled those who 
had been proscribed on eighteen Fructidor, reopened the churches and 
closed the list of the emigrants. It was only after Marengo, however, 
that he opened with the Pope the negotiations that led to the concordat 
that again united Church and State (1801), to which, however, he added 
"organic articles" (1802) which the Pope could never be induced to sanc- 
tion, as these articles enslaved the Church to the State. This politico- 
ecclesiastical code remained in force until January ist, 1806. Bonaparte 
also rid the rural districts of the banditti who had infested them, and, so 
as to establish an administration at one and the same time strong and 
judicious, he organized the department on the model of the State itself. 
The departments had been administered by elective directories, over which 
the central power had little supervision, and which themselves did nothing 
or only a little, and that badly; for these he substituted a prefect depending 
directly on the minister of the interior, and concentrated all executive 
authority in this official's hands. Side by side with him he set up in the 
prefecture council a sort of departmental Council of State, and in the 
general council a sort of Corps Legislatif. The sub-prefect had also an 
arrondissement council, and the mayor of each commune a municipal 
council; each arrondissement or sub-prefecture had a civil court and a 
special receiver for the finances; and each department had a criminal 
court and a receiver-general. Twenty-seven courts of appeal were dis- 
tributed over the world of the nation's territory, and a supreme court of 
errors (cassation) maintained uniformity of jurisprudence. A commission 
composed of PortaUs, Tronchet, Bigot de Preameneu and Malleville, 
often presided over by Bonaparte himself, prepared the Civil Code, which 



474 Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 

the Council of State discussed and which the Corps Legislatif, after con- 
sultation with the great judiciary and the Tribunate, adopted in 1804. 
One of the useful creations of that period was the Bank of France, which 
has rendered great service to the country in times of difficulty. 

Battle of Marengo — Treaties of Luneville and Amiens. — The 

royaUsts, disappointed in their hopes, had raised the banner of insurrection 
in the west; but by energetic measures Bonaparte suppressed this new 
civil war. On the frontiers, and especially on the side of Italy, serious 
dangers threatened the Republic — the situation seemed the same as in 
1796. Instead of repeating himself by turning the Alps as on the former 
occasion, Bonaparte crossed them through the St. Bernard pass, and 
fell on Melas's rear, while that general, master of Genoa, was threaten- 
ing to cross the Var. In a single battle, at Marengo, he reconquered 
Italy (June 14, 1800). That brilUant success and Moreau's victory at 
Hohenlinden forced Austria to sign the treaty of Luneville (February 9, 
1 801). England alone, still governed by Pitt, persisted in hostilities. 
The ideas that, twenty years before, had armed the northern States against 
England, appeared again in the counsels of the kings. The czar and the 
kings of Prussia, Denmark and Sweden, whose trade the English were 
molesting, had renewed the neutrals' league (December, 1800). England 
answered with the embargo placed in its ports on the vessels of the allied 
States, and Nelson, forcing the passage of the Sound, menaced Copen- 
hagen with bombardment. This bold movement and the assassination 
of Paul I broke up the neutrals' league; the new czar, Alexander I, aban- 
doned his father's policy, and France found itself alone in defending the 
Hberty of the seas. The capitulation of Malta after a blockade of twenty- 
six months and the evacuation of Egypt by the French army seemed to 
justify England's constancy; but it was suffering from the weight of an 
enormous national debt and the poverty of its laboring classes, which was 
causing bloody riots; and for a long time past the Bank of England was 
not paying in specie. Besides, it saw French shipping revive. In a 
skirmish at Algeciras three French vessels had victoriously resisted six 
English ships, two of which were sunk, and at Boulogne immense prep- 
arations were being made for a descent upon England. On the eve of 
signature of the treaty of Luneville, Pitt had fallen from power; a few 
months afterwards the new minister came to an agreement with France 
as to the preUminaries of peace, which was signed at Amiens on March 
25, 1802. France's acquisitions and the republics which it had founded 
were recognized. England restored its colonies, gave back Malta to the 
Knights of St. John and the Cape of Good Hope to the Dutch; it retained 



Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 475 

only the Spanish island of Trinidad and Ceylon, which completed its estab- 
lishment in the Indies. Peace was restored on every continent and on 
every sea; the kmgs' coalition was vanquished. But for one man's inordinate 
ambition there might not have been another European war for a long time. 

Bonaparte's Life Consulate. — The treaty of Amiens crowned Bona- 
parte's glory. For the second time he had given peace to France. Egypt 
was lost, and an expedition to make the negroes of San Domingo recognize 
the authority of the mother country was about to fail. But these far-off 
reverses scarcely awakened an echo in France. They were forgotten when 
men saw parties appeased and order restored everywhere by the able and 
firm hand of the First Consul. For industry he renewed Colbert's powerful 
impulse. Commerce was encouraged, the finances were reorganized, 
roads and harbors were repaired, and the arsenals wxre filled. In Paris 
he threw three bridges over the Seine. Between the Seine and the Oise 
valleys he dug the Saint-Quentin canal; between France and Italy he 
opened the splendid Simplon road, and he founded hospices on the top of 
the Alps. The Civil Code was discussed under his supervision, and he 
was already organizing the plan of a powerful organization of national 
education. Marvelous activity and an unheard of power for work made 
h'lm see everything, understand everything, do everything. The arts and 
literature received valuable encouragement from him, and, to reward civil 
and military services, talent and courage, he instituted the order of the 
Legion of Honor, a glorious system of social distinctions which the spirit of 
equality might accept. A stranger to the rancors of the past ten years, 
he welcomed the emigrants, recalled the priests and signed the Concordat 
with Pius VII, but unfortunately added the Organic Articles to it; he -tried 
to wipe out hatreds and to form but one great party, that of France. In 
the last place, while chaining the Revolution to his chariot, he retained its 
principles in his Civil Code, that is, he made them imperishable. 

But he could not disarm all his enemies. Every day fresh conspiracies 
were hatched against his life. The infernal machine of the Rue Saint- 
Nicaise had come near ending his career. In order, as he said himself, to 
send terror back to his enemies even as far as London, he ordered the 
execution of Georges Cadoudal, who had come to Paris to assassinate him; 
he exiled Moreau, imprisoned Pichegru, who strangled himself in his cell, 
and, in violation of the law of nations, carrying off the duke of Enghien 
from Ettenheim castle in Baden, he turned him over to a military commis- 
sion that condemned him and had him shot the same night in the trenches 
of Vincennes (March 20, 1804). On August 2, 1802, four months after the 
treaty of Amiens, he had himself appointed Consul for life. In order to 



476 Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 

harmonize institutions with his new powers, the constitution of the year 
VIII was revised. For the notabiUty Hsts were substituted electoral 
colleges for life, and important changes were made to the advantage of the 
Senate. Invested with the constituent power, that body had the right to 
regulate by decrees what had not been foreseen by the organic laws, to 
suspend jury trial, to dissolve the Corps Legislatif and the Tribunate, and 
to put the departments outside of the constitution. Nevertheless, the 
organic decrees of the Senate were to be previously discussed in a privy 
council whose members would be chosen on each occasion by the First 
Consul. 

Bonaparte Becomes Hereditary Emperor Napoleon I. — Admira- 
tion for a fine genius, gratitude for great services, and a crying need for 
order after so many agitations, caused the acceptance of these dangerous 
novelties. In the Tribunate a few members protested; but the voice of 
Daunou, Lanjuinais, Chenier, Carnot and Benjamin Constant, as well as 
the opposition of Madame de Stael and Chateaubriand, were lost in the 
splendor surrounding the new power. The end of these innovations was 
the declaration by which the Senate entreated the First Consul to govern 
the French Republic with the title of hereditary emperor under the name of 
Napoleon I. France's powerful master was unable to master himself and 
restrain his ambition. Over three and a half million votes had accepted 
the empire. Pope Pius VII went himself to Paris to the new Charlemagne 
(December 2, 1804). So as to give to the throne which had just been 
erected the splendor of the old monarchies and to unite under the same 
titles the men of the Revolution and those of the old regime. Napoleon 
created a new nobility — counts, dukes and princes. He appointed eighteen 
marshals, namely, Berthier, Murat, Moncey, Jourdan, Massena, Augereau, 
Bernadotte, Soult, Brune, Lannes, Mortier, Ney, Davoust, Bessieres, 
Kellermann, Lefevre, Perignon and Serrurier, with titles and hberal endow- 
ments in money and lands. Men saw again the old court offices, grand 
dignitaries, chamberlains, and even pages. 

Napoleon was president of the Italian Republic. Having turned 
emperor in France, he became king in Italy (March 18, 1805). That 
beautiful country, weakened by a servitude of four or five centuries' dura- 
tion and by divisions that dated from the fall of the Roman empire in the 
west, could not then unaided either defend itself or become united. If 
France withdrew its hand, Austria would sieze it again or it would relapse 
into its eternal rivalries. That unity which Napoleon I wished to give to 
the inhabitants of the peninsula by first making them Frenchmen, Napoleon 
III afterwards guaranteed to them by leaving them Italians, and he brought 



Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 477 

about his own downfall for his pains. From 1803 the emperor was mediator 
of the Helvetian Republic; he had taken advantage of the right conferred 
on him by that title to give Switzerland a nev^ constitution which, main- 
taining peace between its rival cantons, was to lead them to form a veritable 
nation without destroying patriotism in the localities. Six new cantons, 
Aargau, Thurgau, St. Gall, Graubunden (Grisons), Vaud and Ticino, 
were added to the thirteen old ones, and all privileges disappeared. After 
the proclamation of the empire Napoleon made no change in his relations 
with that country, but he made several Swiss regiments come into his 
service. 

Third Coalition — Austerlitz and Presburg.— Pitt had returned to 
power on May 15, 1804, and the war party regained the upper hand. Eng- 
land, in fact, could not resign itself to evacuating Malta, and, when asked 
to do so, without declaring war seized twelve hundred French and Dutch 
vessels. The provocation was hardly worth this reprisal and its conse- 
quence, as the island was not worth the provocation. Napoleon answered 
by invading Hanover, the king of England's patrimony, and by at once 
beginning preparation for carrying an army across the Strait of Dover. 
The American Fulton offered the agency for doing so by means of the 
steamboat he had built; but his offer was declined. The danger was 
great to England, for Nelson himself failed against the Boulogne flotilla 
that, if storm had kept the English vessels away for a few days or calm 
should leave them motionless, was ready to carry one hundred and fifty 
thousand men on thirteen hundred ships. Another combination would 
have enabled Admiral Villeneuve to the Toulon fleet to protect the crossing; 
but he failed in boldness, and, for having dreaded a defeat in the Channel, 
a few months later he met with terrible disaster off Cape Trafalgar in 
southwestern Spain (October 21, 1805). 

England warded off the danger by forming a third coalition with 
Sweden, Russia, Austria and Naples; Prussia held back and waited for 
events. The emperor was at the Boulogne camp when he learned that one 
hundred and sixty thousand Austrians, preceding a Russian army, were 
advancing on the Adige under the archduke Charles, and under General 
Mack on the Rhine. It was necessary to defer the invasion of England. 
Napoleon at once raised the Boulogne cam.p, dispatched the Grand Army 
post haste to the Rhine, and, while Massena kept the archduke in check, 
he himself outflanked Mack, shut him up in Ulm, and made him surrender 
(October 19). The destruction of his fleet at Trafalgar two days later 
obliged him to abandon the sea, where he could no longer meet his enemy 
on equal terms; but he was master on land, and was already meditating the 



478 Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 

destruction of the English by shutting them out from the continent. On 
November 19 he entered Vienna, and on December 2 won the battle of 
Austerlitz over the emperors of Austria and Russia. The remnants of the 
Russian army returned home by stages, and Austria, by the treaty of Pres- 
burg, abandoned the Venetian States, Istria and Dalmatia, which Napoleon 
united with the kingdom of Italy; the Tyrol and Austrian Suabia, with 
which he enlarged the domains of the dukes of Wiirtemburg, Bavaria and 
Baden, of whom he made the first two kings and the third a grand duke 
(December 26). Thus, by the cession of Venice Austria lost all hold on 
Italy, and by that of the Tyrol all influence over Switzerland. The offer of 
Hanover made to the court of Berlin in exchange for Cleves and Neuchatel 
was meant to shut out Prussia also from the French frontier. 

The Confederation of the Rhine. — The emperor was contemplating 
the setting up of a new European system. He wished to be the Charle- 
ma<yne of modern Europe, and he had conceived for his empire a plan that 
was to be completed only after Tilsitt, but which it is proper to present now 
in its sum total so as not to have to return to it. Taking up the idea which 
Mazarin had entertained of a league of the States of western Germany, 
after Austerlitz he organized the Confederation of the Rhine. The old 
German empire was dissolved after a duration often centuries, Francis H, 
reduced to his hereditary domains, abdicated the title of emperor of Germany 
to take that of emperor of Austria. The three hundred and seventy-one 
petty States that divided the German soil among them, and there maintained 
a permanent anarchy, were reduced to less than forty, to the advantage of 
the more powerful princes, and then the latter, several of whom received 
from France the name, and all the status, of kings, united under the pro- 
tection of Napoleon in a federative State from which Prussia and Austria, 
half Slav States, were excluded. 

The new diet, divided into two colleges or houses, sat at Frankfort. 
The Kings' College comprised the kings of Bavaria and Wurtemberg, the 
Prince primate (ex-Elector of Mayence), the grand dukes of Baden, Berg 
and Hesse-Darmstadt; and the Princes' College had the dukes of Nassau, 
Hohenzollern, Salm, etc. The immediate nobility, shut up between the 
territories of these various princes, and whose formation the former emperors 
had favored so as to weaken the great vassals, was mediatized, that is 
subjected to the power of the territorial head, which took from it the sov- 
ereign rights of legislation, supreme jurisdiction, higher police, taxation 
and recruiting. Each of the confederated States was to be absolutely 
free in its internal government; common resolutions were adopted only in 
regard to external relations. Successively increased by the addition of new 



Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 479 

members, yet the Confederation had only thirty-four of them in 1813. It 
was an immense step that Napoleon had taken in order to make Germany 
approach unity, and France was afterwards to pay dearly for the final 
consequence of that simplifying, by the suppression of the Frankfort diet 
and the restoration of a German empire far more powerf\il than the old one. 
But as regards the progress of civil order in Germany and the maintenance 
of peace in Europe, the idea of placing between three military States, 
France, Prussia and Austria, a confederation slow to take action and neces- 
sarily pacific, that would keep their frontiers from touching, was a happy 
combination; but in order that it should succeed, Napoleon should have 
left real independence to the confederates. By his wishing to make that 
third Germany too French, he brought about the result that the Germans 
of the centre and west who then so gladly welcomed the French were by 
their needs driven towards those of the north and east, from whom he had 
wished to separate them. If the emperor had confined himself to the first 
conception of the treaty of Presburg and the Confederation of the Rhine 
he would have assured for a long time the peace of Europe and the greatness 
of France. 

States in Vassalage to Napoleon. — ^The creation of the new State 
was but a part in the sum total of the ambitious and rash combinations of 
that upstart genius. Nearly all his male relatives he made kings and 
princes. Three of his brothers, Louis, Jerome and Joseph, became the 
kings of Holland, Westphalia and Naples; his stepson, Eugene de Beauhar- 
na'is, viceroy of Italy; his brother-in-law, Murat, grand duke of Berg and 
afterwards king of Naples when Napoleon deemed it useful to transfer 
Joseph to Madrid as king of Spain; his sister Elisa princess of Lucca and 
Piombino, and later on grand duchess of Tuscany; and his other sister, 
Paulina, duchess of Guastalla. He was himself king of Italy and mediator 
of Switzerland; his ministers, his marshals, and the high officers of his 
crown had sovereign principaHties outside of France, like Berthier at 
Neuchatel, Talleyrand at Benevento, and Bernadotte at Ponte Corvo, or 
duchies in Lombardy, Naples, Venetia and Illyria, without feudal power, 
it is true, but with a share in the public properties and revenues. Thus did 
dynastic take the place of national policy, and Napoleon committed the 
imprudence of giving to one family, but yesterday unknown and poor, 
more crowns than the old houses of Hapsburg and Bourbon had ever worn. 
But by this sudden elevation of all his relatives he thought he was serving 
France still more than his own house. Believing in the strength of adminis- 
trative organizations and not at all in that of ideas or of popular feelings, 
he imagined he was strengthening his empire by surrounding it with these 



48o Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 

feudatory States as so many supporting bulwarks and advance posts that 
would guard the approaches to it. Those kings, princes and dukes who 
renewed the royal races in so many countries, on their thrones or under the 
emblazoned ermine with which he covered them, were only prefects of 
France, and it escaped no one's notice that, in one form or another, half 
of Europe obeyed Napoleon. 

Jena, Tilsitt, and the Continental Blockade. — In the face of that 
ever growing ambition, it was inevitable that the powers remaining sta- 
tionary would try to do against it what France had done in the sixteenth 
century to the detriment of all Europe against the house of Austria, and 
Europe in the seventeenth century against the house of Bourbon. It was 
a necessary policy — the union of the weak to keep him within bounds who 
was seeking omnipotence. That was why Napoleon had himself to blame 
if war was always either threatened or declared. The canonading at 
Austerlitz had killed William Pitt, and Fox, his rival, a more liberal-minded 
man, who did not share his hatred of France, succeeded him in the ministry. 
Napoleon at once oflPered to make terms, and, as the guarantee of lasting 
peace with England was the restoration of Hanover, the patrimony of its 
kings, he caused the possibility of this to be intimated at London. Prussia, 
which thought it already held that prey so long coveted, became irritated 
at what It regarded as an act of perfidy, and, as Fox's death had restored 
power to the advocates of war, the Berlin court rashly plunged into it. The 
victories of Jena and Auerstaedt (October 14, 1806) broke the Prussian 
monarchy. Behind Prussia Napoleon once more f und the Russians. 
After having checked them at Eylau (February 8, 1807), he crushed them 
at Friedland (June 14), and the emperor Alexander signed the treaty of 
Tilsitt, which reduced Prussia by half, to five million souls, and gave 
Finland to Russia. 

Some days after Jena, Napoleon had tried to reach England by pro- 
mulgating the Berlin decree, which declared the British Islands in a state 
of blockade and forbade all trade with them. It was a re'prisal against the 
maritime despotism of the English; but for it to be effective it was necessary 
that not one gateway to the continent should remain open to their merchan- 
dise. After having closed those of Holland, North Germany and Prussia, 
it was therefore necessary to shut also those of Russia and Spain, that is, 
to make himself almost master everywhere. The continental blockade 
was a g'lgantic war machine that must surely give the death-blow to one of 
the two adversaries, and it was Napoleon it killed. 

Invasion of Spain— Battle of Wagram. — As Portugal refused to 



Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 481 

take part in the new policy, Napoleon formed an army corps to drive the 
English from that kingdom. At that time the Madrid court was giving 
the saddest spectacle to the world. Ferdinand, the heir presumptive, 
was conspiring against his father, Charles IV, the victim of an unworthy 
favorite, and the latter in terror invoked the emperor's aid. Napoleon 
used duplicity that was not in keeping with his strength. He enticed the 
two princes to Bayonne and prevailed upon the aged monarch to abdicate 
in his favor (May 9, 1808). Ferdinand was relegated under a vigilant 
guard to the castle of Valen^ay; Charles withdrew with a sort of court 
to that of Compiegne. Napoleon wished to take up the policy of Louis 
XIV and to make sure of Spain on the south, so as to have on the north 
his full liberty of action. The idea was a good one; but it was badly 
carried out. That attempt to lay hands on Spain was one of the causes 
of the empire's fall. French troops had already entered Spain; but the 
courage of the soldiers and the skill of their leaders were unavailing against 
the religious and patriotic ardor of the Spaniards. It was all very fine 
for Napoleon to win victories and to bring to Madrid his brother Joseph, 
whom as king he took away from the Neapolitans to give him to the 
Spaniards. In that mountainous country insurrection crushed at one 
point reappeared at another; and then England was furnishing arms, 
money, soldiers and generals. 

In spite of the assurances which Napoleon received from all the powers 
of the continent at the Erfurth interview, the English succeeded in organ- 
izing a fifth coalition, which compelled the emperor to leave his Spanish 
undertaking unfinished in order to make a fresh raid into Germany. On 
May 12, 1808, he entered Vienna for the second time, and on July 6th 
following, he won the bloody battle of Wagram, followed by the treaty 
of Vienna. By that instrument Austria lost three million souls, whom 
France, Bavaria, Saxony, the grand duchy of Warsaw and Russia divided 
between them. Napoleon then seemed to be at the height of his power. 
His empire, which extended from the mouth of the Elbe to that of the 
Tiber, contained one hundred and thirty departments. His marriage 
to the archduchess Maria Louisa had gained him entrance into one of 
the oldest royal houses of Europe. The birth of a son (March 20, 181 1), 
who was proclaimed king of Rome in his cradle, and who was to die young 
as duke of Reichstadt (1832), exhausted prosperity for him. He had 
turned all pious Catholics against him by seizing the Papal States and 
carrying oflf the Pope as a prisoner because Pius VII would not take part 
in the continental blockade (1809). 

Reaction against the Napoleonic Spirit. — England's revolution 

31 



482 Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 

of 1688 had remained exclusively English; that of France a century later 
was philosophical, in the sense that Frenchmen, instead of claiming the 
ancient liberties of the country, became inspired with the idea of rights 
common to all men united in society; they thought of mankind almost 
as much as of France, and that concern constituted the greatness as well 
as the wretchedness of the French Revolution. From this it followed, 
in fact, that the new order emerged from the past only by rending it with 
excruciating pains; but also that what was general in the first of the too 
numerous French constitutions, and what has been called the principles 
of 1789 seemed as good on the banks of the Meuse, the Rhine and the 
Po as on those of the Seine, and that feeling contributed to France's suc- 
cesses; whence so many constitutions based on that of France, and not 
all imposed by the victor. One day the Revolution abdicated in favor 
of a soldier of genius who made two parts of the legacy of 1789 — the one 
liberty, which he postponed; the other civil equality, which he pretended 
to establish everywhere, while seeking in that work France's greatness, 
and especially his own. Doomed to an endless war by his own ambition 
as well as by England's hostility, in the intoxication of victory and power 
he forgot his true part and assumed that of a conqueror whose hand removed 
or brushed aside everything that was an obstacle to him. Thus at Pres- 
burg and Tilsitt had Napoleon at his will redrawn the map of central 
Europe, and had dreams still greater than the terrible realities, the spec- 
tacle of which he gave to the world. The peoples, recently France's 
allies, had become to him the pieces on a chessboard whose movements 
he directed according only to the combinations of his mind; he had taken 
these and given those unheedful of time-honored traditions and affections 
or of interests that did not mean to change. And he had not suspected 
that from amid those masses, momentarily inert, a force greater than that 
of the best trained armies, more formidable than those coalitions of kings 
wKich he had four times destroyed — the will of men bent on being no 
longer treated as herds that are bought or sold, yoked or divided. At 
first indifferent to the fall of their royal houses, the peoples now under- 
stood that they were the victims, cruelly tried, of those disturbances; 
that independence is not merely the dignity of nations as liberty is that 
of individuals, but that it is also the safeguard of interests; that, in the 
last place, the most personal habits, ideas and feelings are painfully ruffled 
by a foreign master even when he presents himself with his hands full 
of favors. Then, for the purpose of defending the political conscience, 
mankind regained the enthusiasm it had had of old. But though it cost 
France much to acknowledge and to say so, the force that broke Napoleon 
and France's fortune was of the same nature, though of a different order, 
as that which had broken Philip IT. 



Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 483 

Preparations for Insurrection in Germany.— After having 
destroyea a fifth coahtion at Wagram, Napoleon regarded his fortunes as 
more secure than ever. But his arms were no longer invincible. In the 
Iberian peninsula Junot, and even Massena himself, had not been able 
to conquer Portugal, and in 1808 General Dupont had signed the humiliat- 
ing capitulation of Baylen. The enemies' hopes increased, and England 
renewed its firm resolve to fight to the bitter end, when it saw the hatred 
of the governments against Napoleon gradually sink into the hearts of 
the peoples and there supplant afi^ection for France. After Jena Prussia 
had surrendered; army corps capitulated without fighting, strong for- 
tresses surrendered without firing a shot, and yet Prussia became the 
chief instrument of Germany's vengeance against France, though it did 
not rise by its own strength to that high eminence. Its king, Frederick 
William, of a mystic turn of mind, in answering those asking reforms 
from him, said: "I am he whom Providence has reserved for the salva- 
tion of Prussia." But none of those around him or even himself imagined 
anything beyond the old Prussian monarchical system, and the number 
of those who were resigned was quite considerable. It was Germans 
foreign to Prussia who urged the regeneration of that country — Stein of 
Nassua, Scharnhorst and Hardenberg of Hanover. Baron von Stein 
set to work on the morrow of Tilsitt. He abolished glebe serfdom, granted 
the right of property to the peasants; to the cities the right to name their 
own magistrates, and through elective councils to administer their own 
affairs. He reformed the higher administration in the direction of liberty 
and brought about the decision that the grades of officers, hitherto reserved 
for the nobles, should be the reward of courage and merit. Scharnhorst, 
when appointed minister of war, took it upon himself to evade the article 
of the treaty of Tilsitt that reduced the effective force of the Prussian 
army to forty-two thousand men. For safety he depended on the principle 
of obligatory service, and to apply it he made every man fit to bear arms, 
serve in succession under the flag, dismissing them as soon as they were 
drilled. In a short time he prepared in this way an army of one hundred 
and fifty thousand men, who awaited only the decree of a general levy to 
appear on the battlefield. These reforms, inspired by the ideas of 1789, 
created a public spirit in Prussia by interesting all classes of the popula- 
tion in the welfare of the State, and they revived patriotism. An asso- 
ciation founded by a few professors, the Tugendbund (League of Virtue), 
which had at first only twenty members, spread rapidly throughout the 
whole of Germany, where ere long those affiliated with it were numbered 
by thousands. It had assumed as its mission the restoration of German 
strength and morality. Proscribed by Napoleon on 18 10, it subsisted 



484 Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 

secretly, penetrated into the deepest strata of the population, and prepared 
the way for the reawakening of 18 13. 

Progress of Liberal Ideas in Europe. — Spain's resistance caused 
great enthusiasm in Germany, and Stein turned to account against France 
every item of news coming from that heroic struggle. Napoleon, the 
genius of military order, paid little heed to moral forces. He believed 
in himself, in his strategical or administrative combinations, ahd did not 
think that an idea could resist a cannon shot. Accordingly, the meaning 
of Stein's reforms escaped him; he laughed at the minister who, "from 
lack of troops of the line, was contemplating the sublime plan of levying 
masses." Later on, however, he demanded his resignation; and at last, 
in an insulting decree dated from Madrid, he proscribed "that fellow 
Stein" (1809). The insult was keenly felt in Prussia and the whole of 
Germany; but Hardenberg none the less continued the reforms — en- 
franchisement of the peasants, industrial liberty so as to stimulate work, 
abolition of some of the exception laws aimed against the Jews, and, 
so as not to leave any power excluded, the founding of the university of 
Berlin (18 10), whence Fichte was about to address his discourses to the 
German People, which sent as many recruits to the insurrection as did 
Arndt's and SchenkendorfF's ardent poems, or Kcerner's Death Song 
and Rueckert's Shield Sonnets. "Then consciousness of Fatherland 
was born amid tears, blood and despair, but also in prayer and the ideal 
of liberty." In Spain and Italy liberal ideas turned also against France. 
The Cadiz Cortes drafted a constitution derived from the principles of 
1789 — sovereignty of the nation, delegation of the executive power to 
the king, of the legislative power to the representatives of the country, 
I'oerty of the press, except in matters of religion, and suppression of ever)' 
privilege in regard to taxation. The former king of Naples, a refugee 
in Sicily, gave to that province a constitution based on that of England. 
Thus to fight France, kings and peoples were taking up its own weapons, 
those which, in the early wars of the Revolution, had won for France 
the conquest of the Austrian Netherlands, Holland, the left bank of the 
Rhine, Switzerland and Italy. Privileges were abolished, and Hberal 
institutions were substituted for what still remained of feudalism; and 
as France no longer represented but military dictatorship, an old and 
worn-out form of government, it was, in spite of the extraordinary man 
placed at its head, to succumb in the struggle. 

Formation or Revival of Nationalities. — France, in fact, had 
then against it two irresistible forces. One of them it had itself created, 



Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 485 

namely, that of liberal ideas and the sovereign rights of the nation, with 
all the consequences resulting therefrom; the formation of the other it 
had provoked by doing violence to the peoples — that of the new principle 
of nationalities. Under the pressure of the French armies, the Spanish 
insurgents and the members of the Tugendbund had discovered the 
Fatherland about which their fathers of the eighteenth century had taken 
so little concern; and, while demanding the abolition of privileges, they 
wished to retain their autonomy. It was, therefore, in the mountains of 
Castile, the Tyrol and Bohemia, on the banks of the Elbe and the Oder, and 
on the heaths of Brandenburg that that idea arose or was discovered, 
which renewed history through the question of races, literature through 
that of popular poetry, philology through the comparison of languages, 
pohtics through consideration of the interests resulting from community 
of origins, idiom and traditions. In Germany from 1809, just when 
Austria was completing its armaments against France, public opinion 
had energetically demanded Prussia's participation in the war, and 
Scharnhorst had urged the king to it. Frederick William dared not at- 
tempt that bold stroke; after Wagram he even humiliated himself so far 
as to make reparation to the victor for his subjects' premature patriotism. 
But the secret work that was mining the ground under the feet of the 
powerful master of the west was advancing. Many, even in France, 
saw the symptoms of early ruin. On the morrow of Wagram Admiral 
Decres pointed it out to Marshal Marmont as imminent, and Wellington 
announced it to the English ministers frightened at their isolation. It 
was at that moment Napoleon undertook the rashest of his expeditions. 

The Invasion of Russia. — In order to compel Russia to remain 
in the contmental blockade system, Napoleon was going to lead his armies 
SIX hundred leagues from France, when two hundred and seventy thousand 
of his best soldiers and his ablest captains were held at the other extremity 
of the continent before Cadiz and Wellington's English army. On June 
24, 18 12, he crossed the Niemen at the head of four hundred and fifty 
thousand men. Six days later the Washington Congress declared war 
against the St. James cabinet on account of the right of search carried 
on in a vexatious manner by English crusiers on American trading ves- 
sels. Had the emperor, abandoning his mad expedition to Russia, as 
in 1805 concentrated his strength and his genius on the war against Eng- 
land, with the new ally that was rising for him on the other side of the 
Atlantic, unexpected results might have followed; but he counted only 
on himself. At first the expedition seemed to be successful. The Rus- 
sians were beaten everywhere — at Vitebsk, at Smolensk, at Valutina, and 
the bloody victory of the Moskwa Borodino gave him Moscow, the empire's 



486 Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 

second capital, which the Russians burned as they retreated. Unfor- 
tunately for him, he thought he had won peace; he awaited it and lost 
valuable time. When he saw that in order to wrest it a second expedi- 
tion, this time against St. Petersburg, would be necessary, it was too late; 
the impossibility of wintering in the midst of a ruined country compelled 
him to retreat. He could have done so successfully but for a premature 
winter and lack of provisions. The greater part of the army, all the horses, 
and all the baggage perished or were abandoned, either in the snow or 
at the disastrous crossing of the Beresina. 

Taking Advantage of Napoleon's Absence. — ^While the Grand 
Army was melting away in the snows of Russia, treasons which Napoleon 
should have foreseen were breaking out behind him. He had compelled 
Prussia, Austria and the Confederates of the Rhine to furnish him with 
numerous contingents, but Arndt, a refugee in Sweden, and Stein in Russia 
were inundating Germany with patriotic pamphlets in which they sum- 
moned the Germans to desert the French army and represented the czar 
Alexander as the liberator of the peoples. These counsels were heeded, 
and York, commanding a part of the Prussian contingent, passed over 
to the Russians. Frederick William HI at once broached a twofold 
negotiation. He sent word to Napoleon that he was the natural ally of 
France, and to Alexander that he was only awaiting the moment to unite 
with him, along with all his people. He even insinuated to the former 
that there was a means of arranging everything, by giving to the king 
of Prussia the kingdom of Poland, and by intrusting him with stopping 
the invasions of the Russian power. This proposal was an act of treason 
in regard to the German Fatherland, a word which Prussia has so shrewdly 
used since 1815 — in 1864 against Denmark, in 1866 against Austria, in 
1870 against France, and later against Germany itself. Frederick 
William regarded that duplicity as commanded by the circumstances; 
it was, moreover, the continuation of Frederick H's policy. Billow, 
however, who commanded another Prussian corps, had followed York's 
example. Stein then hastened to Koenigsberg, which was in full revolt 
against the king because he seemed to disavow his generals and to hold 
fast to Napoleon. The States of the province organized war to the bitter 
end. On February 7 appeared the ordinance calling for a general enlist- 
ment. A population of a million furnished sixty thousand soldiers. 
Then, while negotiating, the king decided to arm; but it was only on Feb- 
ruary 28 that he signed the treaty of Kalisch with Russia. Again he did 
not forget the interests of his home, for he made Alexander guarantee 
to him aggrandizements in Germany in exchange for Polish territories. 



Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 487 

If Frederick William had hesitated for a long time, it was because he 
was beginning to grow uneasy at the popular movement stirred up by his 
ministers. He found the peoples good to save his crown, but did not mean 
to pay them the ransom with public liberties. He could not now stop, 
however; he issued "the appeal to my people" along with an edict on the 
reserves and the militia, full of warlike fury, in which we find these words : 
"The fight to which you are called sanctifies all means! The most ter- 
rible are the best! Not only will you harass the enemy, but you will 
destroy and annihilate the soldiers, isolated or in bands; you will lay a 
heavy hand on the marauders." At the same time the chairs of the uni- 
versities and the pulpits of the churches resounded with calls to arms; 
in their proclamations the generals and the ministers lavished promises of 
liberty. The war of the peoples had begun; it had its great battle, that 
of Leipzig, the battle of the nations. 

From the Beresina to Elba. — After the disastrous crossing of 
Beresina Napoleon, hastening to Paris, recruited a new army. But 
all his allies except Denmark had turned against him. Sweden, under 
guidance of one of his former generals, Bernadotte, had set the example; 
Austria was awaiting an opportunity to join its arms with those of the 
Russians, who had conquered without fighting, and the whole of Ger- 
many, worked up by secret societies and pamphleteers (especially Gcerres), 
kept itself in readiness to pass, even on the battlefield, over to the enemies' 
ranks. The brilliant victories of Lutzen, Bautzen and Wurschen, won 
by Napoleon with raw conscripts in the campaign of 1813, for some time 
stopped the defection of Austria; but that power at last forgot family bonds, 
and the emperor Francis claimed the right to aid in dethroning his daughter 
and grandson along with their tyrant husband and father. Three hundred 
thousand men united at Leipzig against Napoleon's one hundred and 
thirty thousand. After a gigantic three-days' struggle, aided by the defec- 
tion of the Saxons, who, passed over to them in the middle of the action, 
the alHes inflicted the first defeat on the terrible emperor, who was forced 
to fall back on the Rhine. The following year witnessed that wonderful 
French campaign in which Napoleon's military genius wrought miracles. 
But while he was struggling heroically with a few thousand men against 
united Europe, the royalists raised their heads and the Liberals opposed 
his measures. At that supreme moment a dictatorship was needed to 
save France from the national disgrace of a foreign invasion; but it was 
more important to save Europe from such a master, and it was no wonder 
that to many Frenchmen the enemy seemed a liberator. In vain was 
Napoleon victorious at Champaubert, Montmirail and Montereau; the 



488 Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 

allies kept ever advancing, favored by the defections that were taking 
place everywhere, especially in the south, v^hence were coming the duke 
of Wellington and the English, whom Marshal Soult was able to delay 
but momentarily by the battle of Toulouse. A bold movement on the 
rear of the hostile armies might perhaps save the day. Should Paris hold 
out only for a very short time the alHes, with their communications cut off, 
might be in a difficult position. But Paris, defended only for twelve 
hours, capitulated (March 30, 18 14), and the Senate proclaimed the 
emperor's fall. At Fontainebleau he himself signed his abdication 
(April 11). 

The Restoration, the Hundred Days, Waterloo.— The French 
princes of the house of Bourbon had followed the hostile armies. The 
czar, the king of Prussia and the emperor of Austria, embarrassed as to 
the choice of the government they would impose on France, were pre- 
vailed upon by Talleyrand and the royalists to acknowledge Louis XVIII, 
who dated his reign from the death of his nephew. The white flag was 
substituted for the tricolor, and France receded within the boundaries 
which it had had before the Revolution, surrendering fifty-eight fortified 
places which its troops still held, twelve thousand pieces of artillery, thirty 
vessels and twelve frigates (first treaty of Paris, May 30, 18 14). In com- 
pensation for so many sacrifices Louis XVIII granted a constitutional 
charter, creating two chambers in which the great interests of the country 
would be discussed. The emigrants, returning with the princes, became 
irritated at these concessions made to the new ideas. The greed of some, 
the superannuated pretensions of others, and the excesses of all, aroused 
great discontent, the echo of which reached even the island of Elba, to 
which Napoleon had been banished. He thought he could take advan- 
tage of the new feeling to repair his recent disasters, but his insatiable 
ambition only brought more trouble to France. Having cleverly effected 
his escape from his mock island realm, on March i, 1815, he landed at 
Antibes, between Cannes and Frejus, with an escort of eight hundred 
men. Encouraged by the reception accorded to him, in a few days he 
issued a manifesto in which occur the words that have since become pro- 
verbial: **The Bourbons learn nothing; neither do they forget anything." 
All the troops sent against him passed over to his side, and, without firing 
a shot, he reentered Paris, from which the Bourbons had fled for the second 
time. But the allied princes had not yet disbanded their armies. They 
were then assembled at the congress of Vienna, busy with regulating 
the affairs of Europe as they pleased. Once more they set their hosts on 
the march against France, and made Bonaparte an outlaw to the nations. 




^si^ssssMsssm 



III III II II IIIM III I 'l 1111111111 MM III I llllil liHilli 



Bonaparte as Despot of France and of Europe 489 

The Corsican adventurer, however, had tried to rally the Liberals to him 
by proclaiming the Act Additional (to the constitutions of the empire) 
which sanctioned most of the principles of the Charter. As soon as he 
had restored order in the country, he hurried to meet Wellington and 
Blucher, defeated the Prussians at Ligny (June i6, 1815), and for half 
a day struggled victoriously with sixty-five thousand men against ninety 
thousand English, Belgians, Hanoverians, etc. (at Waterloo, June 18). 
Wellington was already preparing to retreat when the Prussians, having 
by a fortunate combination of circumstances escaped from Grouchy who 
had been set to watch them, fell upon the exhausted French. Disaster 
ended the destinies of the empire, and Europe saw "the arbiter of others' 
fate a supphant for his own." The emperor once more abdicated in 
favor of his son, Napoleon II (June 22). Paris for the second time saw 
the invaders enter within its walls, pillage its museums and despoil its 
libraries. Bonaparte, whom no one dared put to death, was banished to the 
barren rock of St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic. After a tragicomic 
captivity of six years, he died there on May 5, 1821. 



CHAPTER XXX 



Reconstruction and Reaction After Napoleon's Fall 



The Congress of Vienna. — The second treaty of Paris (November 20, 
18 15) was more disastrous to France than the first. A war indemnity of 
seven hundred millions, in addition to special claims amounting to three 
hundred and seventy millions, foreign occupation for five years, rearrange- 
ment of frontier taking considerable territory from France, and the leaving 
of several gaps for invaders, were the fruits of Bonaparte's last venture. 
On sea its power was gone, and it had lost Tabago, Santa Lucia, the Isle 
of France and the Seychelles, and England, while leaving to it the marts 
in India, forbade their being fortified. But France had escaped greater 
disasters. From policy England, so as not to shake the throne of the 
Bourbons, and the emperor Alexander from interested sympathy for the 
country, had thwarted the plans of Prussia, which already wished to gain 
possession of Alsace and Lorraine. 

The Congress of Vienna, at which the affairs of Europe were regulated 
had been opened in September, 1814. All the excesses with which Napoleon 
had been reproached were repeated there; and the four sovereigns (of 
Russia, England, Prussia and Austria) who had set themselves up as the 
instruments of Providence against revolutionary France rearranged the 
map of Europe to the advantage of their ambition. A veritable market 
of men was held. The commission entrusted with reapportioning the 
human flock among the kings, known by the significant name of Valuation 
Commission, was very much taken up with the demands of Prussia, which 
claimed an indemnity of three million three hundred thousand souls. 
They went so far as to discuss the quality of the merchandise, and they did 
France the honor of acknowledging that a former Frenchman of Aix-la- 
Chapelle or Cologne was worth more than a Pole so as to equalize the 
parts, they gave fewer men on the left bank of the Rhine than on the right 
bank of the Oder. When the four powers were in accord, there were no 
ecclesiastical princes and the free cities were a cheap booty that was divided 
unscrupulously. At one time that trade in whites, however, came near lead- 
ing to the rupture of the coalition. Russia and Prussia had come to an un- 
490 



Reconstruction and Reaction After Napoleon's FalUgi 

derstandingthat would give the former the whole of Poland and the latter 
all of Saxony in exchange for its Polish provinces. "Everyone must find 
what suits him," the Czar had said. England, Austria and France agreed 
to make this plan fail (secret treaty of January 3, 18 15), and the French 
ambassador, Talleyrand, succeeded in saving the king of Saxony; but 
at the same time he compromised France by proposing to give to Prussia, 
in exchange for the Saxon provinces which it wanted, those of the Rhine, 
v/hich it did not want, and later on that arrangement was to bring trouble 
to France, a trouble, however, chiefly of its own making. 

How the Preat Powers Fared. — Russia received the best part of the 
grand duchy of Warsaw, as far as the gates of Posen and Cracow , as well as 
a portion of GaUcia and the district of Zamosk; Austria won the Venetian 
States, Ragusa, the Valtelina, Bormio and Chiavenna valleys, and re- 
gained possession of Salzburg, the Tyrol and Vorarlberg; Prussia ac- 
quired the duchy of Posen, Swedish Pomerania, seven hundred thousand 
souls in Saxony, Westphalia and Rhenish Prussia. England had no 
territorial claim to make on the continent; it had obtained restitution to 
its royal house of the Electorate of Hanover, along with some additions of 
territory; but as Hanover was a male fief, a separation was foreseen that 
took place in 1837. Moreover, it could remain satisfied with keeping 
what it had acquired on every sea during its struggle against the Revolu- 
tion and the Empire — Heligoland, opposite the mouths of the Elbe and the 
Weser; the protectorate of the Ionian Islands, at the entrance to the Adria- 
tic; Malta, between Sicily and Africa; Santa Lucia and Tabago, in the 
Antilles; the Seychelles and the Isle of France, in the Indian Ocean; and 
the Dutch colonies of the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon. France, 
diminished by the increase in power of the four great States, still seemed 
formidable enough for precautions to be taken against it along its frontiers, 
which had been opened to future invasions. The coaUtion established 
as its outposts — on the north Belgium and Holland united in a single 
kingdom under the sceptre of the Prince of Orange; on the northeast the 
Rhenish country divided between Prussia, which got the largest share, 
Holland (Luxemburg and Limburg), Hesse-Darmstadt and Bavaria 
France's old ally, which was put at its doors to become its enemy; lastly, 
in the south Savoy, restored to the king of Sardinia (and Piedmont), placed 
Lyons, France's second capital, v^thin two days' march of the coalition's, 
armies. 

The Confederation of the Rhine. — The most difficult matter had 
been the reconstruction of the Confederation of the Rhine, which was 



492 Reconstruction and Reaction After Napoleon's Fall 

turned anew against France under the name of Germanic Confederation. 
Long and violent debates in the Congress arose on this subject; the small 
States made energetic efforts to save their independence. The German 
Unitarians, and even Prussia, wished to restore the old empire of Germany. 
Austria dared not resume the ancient crown of the Hapsburgs, and the 
kings of Bavaria and Wiirtemberg did not mean to let fall from their heads 
those which Napoleon had placed upon them. Already, when there was 
question of the spoliation of Saxony, Bavaria had promised thirty thousand 
men to Talleyrand if France united with Austria and England wished to 
throw Prussia back into Brandenburg and Russia behind the Vistula; and 
Wiirtemberg, Hanover, Baden and Hesse were in accord with it. It was 
agreed that the empire destroyed in 1806 would not be restored; and when 
the news of the return from Elba came, "a hut to shelter Germany during 
the storm was built in great haste, a wretched shelter which the princes 
themselves destroyed later on. " That Confederation of which a German 
diplomat speaks thus so irreverently was to be composed of thirty-nine 
States, that would send deputies to a diet at Frankfort the perpetual presi- 
dency of which would devolve on Austria; that diet would consist of two 
assemblies, the one ordinary, with seventeen votes, that is, one vote for 
each of the large States, and one also for each of the groups into which the 
small States had been arranged; and the general assembly, in which each 
State had a number of votes in proportion to its importance, in all sixty- 
nine votes. The former would decide current business; the latter was to be 
convened whenever there was question of the fundamental laws or of the 
great interests of the federal pact. The Confederates would retain their 
sovereign independence, their armies, and their diplomatic representation; 
but the Confederation would also have its own army and fortresses that 
were built out of the indemnity paid by France — Luxemburg, Mayence 
and Landau, to close against France the approach to the Rhine; Ra- 
stadt and Ulm, to keep it at the foot of the Black Forest or in the valley 
of the Danube. 

How the Other Countries Fared. — In Switzerland, Geneva and 
Vaud were enlarged at the expense of France with a part of the Gex country 
and some communes of Savoy; Valais, Geneva and Neuchatel, added to 
the nineteen old cantons, formed the Helvetian Confederation, which the 
Congress placed under the guarantee of perpetual neutrality. In Italy 
the king of the Two Sicihes and the Pope recovered what they had lost; 
but Austria again became omnipotent in the peninsula. Mistress of the 
Milanese and Venetia, it made sure of the right bank of the Po by the 
privilege of putting a garrison in Piacenza, Ferrara and Comacchio; it had 



Reconstruction and Reaction after Napoleon's Fall 493 

placed an archduke on the throne of Tuscany, stipulated the revertibility 
to the imperial crown of the duchies of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla 
ceded for life to the ex-empress Maria Louisa, and of that of Modena, given 
to an Austrian prince. In the last place, though he had received Genoa 
and Savoy, the king of Piedmont, poorly defended by the Ticino frontier, 
seemed at the mercy of his formidable neighbor. In the north of Europe 
Sweden, in compensation for Finland taken by Russia, received Norway 
taken from Denmark, which was to obtain in compensation Swedish 
Pomerania and Rugen; but Prussia, bitter against that small State, the 
only one that had remained faithful to France's fortunes, imposed on it 
the exchange of these countries for Lauenburg. That duchy, like Hol- 
stein, was, moreover, but the personal domain of the king, who, in regard 
to these two German provinces, became a member of the Germanic Con- 
federation, that is, of a State organized against France. Denmark in 
1864 and France in 1870 were to feel the effect of these artificial com- 
binations. 

The Holy Alliance. — The stipulations of the Congress of Vienna 
(June 9, 18 15) were the most important act which diplomacy had con- 
cluded in Europe since the Westphalia treaties; the three sovereigns of 
Russia, Austria and Prussia undertook to give it a religious sanction. 
On September 14, 18 10, under the inspiration of the czar Alexander, 
they signed at Paris the treaty of the Holy Alliance, in which they mani- 
fested "before the whole world their unalterable determination to take 
as the rule of their conduct, whether in the administration of their respec- 
tive States or in their political relations with every other government, the 
precepts of the Christian religion, precepts of justice, of charity and of 
peace." Consequently, they pledged themselves, in the first article, to 
regard themselves as "brothers," in the second, "to show one another unal- 
terable good will," by regarding themselves as "delegated by Providence 
to govern three branches of one and the same family, namely, Austria, 
Prussia and Russia;" to form but a single Christian nation having as 
Sovereign "Him to whom alone belongs power as a property, because 
in Him are found all the treasures of love, knowledge and infinite wis- 
dom." In the constitutional countries the kings could not sign the treaty 
of the Holy Alliance; but in all a party supported its principles. 

Thus was crowned, by a mystic and sentimental act, the work of 
the most interested politics. The words "justice and love" present a 
strange contrast with the reality of things. "Public law," said Harden- 
berg, "is useless;" to which Alexander added: "You are ever speaking 
to me of principles; I do not know what they are. What attention 



494 Reconstruction and Reaction after Napoleon's Fall 

do you think I pay to your parchments and your treaties ?" Yet it was 
at the Congress of Vienna that Talleyrand invented the word Legitimacy — 
a strange cradle for an idea of traditional right was that place where so 
many greeds were debated, and where so little consideration was given 
to the desires and the real interests of kings and peoples. In order to 
satisfy political conveniences, Belgium had been attached to Holland in 
spite of itself; Italy had been handed over to Austria, and thus the v^ay 
was prepared for insurrection in the Netherlands and in the peninsula. 
Poland, dismembered, remained a perpetual cause of conflicts between 
the three ''brother monarchs." Lastly, by forgetting the liberal prom- 
ises made to the peoples, so as to raise them against France, the spirit 
of revolt was soon to shake that edifice so laboriously built, and of which, 
in a little over half a century, nothing was to be left standing. 

Why the Work of the Congress did not Last. — ^The Germanic 
Confederation seemed well adapted, it is true, to assuring the peace of 
the continent by separating three great military States. The mutual 
jealousies of Austria and Prussia, the distrust of the small States in regard 
to the large ones, the delays resulting from the complicated play of the 
Germanic Institutions, forearmed Germany against sudden impulses. 
Between three countries of rapid action, Russia turning to account ideas 
of race and religion to the advantage of an age-long policy, England obey- 
ing the mercantile spirit, and France too prone to precipitate resolutions, 
Germany, the classic land of long negotiations, could interpose a tem- 
porizing spirit. By the very nature of its institutions living on perpetual 
compromises, in European affairs it represented the spirit of arrange- 
ment, which is that of diplomacy. But, to render this service to the peace 
of the world, the Confederation, organized for defence and not for attack 
and independent of Berlin as well as of Vienna, should have formed a 
real Germany, neither French as in the time of Napoleon, nor Prussian 
as it has been for more than a generation. Now the two great powers 
meant, on the contrary, to put their strength at the service of their in- 
terests. Austria, occupying but a strip of German territory at its border, 
would remain satisfied with exerting influence at Frankfort. Prussia 
would want more. As it needed Hanover to unite its Rhenish province 
with Brandenburg, and as it needed a slice of Poland to connect the Elec- 
torate with the countries of the Teutonic order, so it would make itself 
ever more and more German; it would cause to be said everywhere, in 
the pulpit and in the press, that it was the hope, the personification of 
the German party, and one day it would drive Austria out of Germany, 
another day it would take Frankfort, nay, even the diet, and it would 



Reconstruction and Reaction after Napoleon's Fall 



4y, 



lead the Germanic Confederation to suicide, after having had itself 
acknowledged, by an act in due form, as its universal legatee. But in 
1815 Prussia was still very far from this menacing greatness, and the 
preponderance in Europe seemed acquired for a long time yet by the 
two powers that found themselves invulnerable even by Napoleon's sword, 
namely, Russia and England. 

Character of the Period between 1815 and 1830.— The Con- 
stituents of 1789, attaching more importance to ideas than to facts, a 
peculiarity of philosophy, but not of politics, had taken up, for the pur- 
pose of applying them to innumerable multitudes, principles that had 
never been carried out but in a comparatively small number of cities or 
tribes. Unfortunately, society is no more capable than the individual 
of effecting the triumph of two great ideas at one and the same time. 
The one, equality, inscribed in Napoleon's civil code, had very soon passed 
into daily life, and France's soldiers had carried its fruitful germ through- 
out the v^hole of Europe; the Terror, France's discords, and a single great 
man's ambition had deferred the other. The latter, however, wished 
also to have itself accepted, and, by associating in many European peoples 
with the national feeling, the spirit of liberty had added its strength to 
all the forces menacing Napoleon. But the victors of I^eipzig and Water- 
loo did not mean to give the national law credit for its share. On the 
contrary, they had united to enchain what they called the revolutionary 
passions, and which was, if we separate from it its excesses and its crimes, 
but a new legitimate evolution of mankind. The struggle which they 
entered upon against the new spirit constitutes the chief interest of the 
drama enacted from 18 15 to 1830. In this drama, on which side was 
jiustice, and consequently the right to life and success ^ This is the ques- 
tion that must be put in the case of every great social conflict. Let us 
eliminate the commonplace accusations of hypocrisy and senile obstinacy 
in regard to the one class, and of love of disorder or of mad Utopia in regard 
to the other; and there will remain the inevitable struggle of an old society 
not wishing to die against a new society pretending to make a place for 
itself in the sun and deserving to find it. 

Unfortunately, this struggle was embittered by the passions that 
urged the latter to cruel acts of violence and the former to culpable con- 
spiracies. The Liberals were wrong in having recourse to rioting, and 
the kings failed to do their duty by ignoring interests and ideas that de- 
manded other institutions than those of the old monarchies. The truth 
was to be found with a few wise men who would have liked, as in Eng- 
land after 1688, to retain from the past the spirit of conservatism, and 



496 Reconstruction and Reaction after Napoleon's Fall 

giving it new life so as to satisfy new needs with the spirit of progress 
which absolute royality had favored of old and which now could be so 
only by liberty. This miracle Louis XVIII, whom a long residence in 
England had enlightened on the advantages of representative govern- 
ment, could perhaps have performed in France; for he saw clearly that 
the country was divided into two camps armed against each other, and 
he understood that a studied and prudent policy could alone unite them. 
But this wisdom did not suit the violent, and the Holy Alliance made 
its application impossible by its system of extreme compression which 
stirred up the activity of the revolutionary ferments throughout the whole 
of Europe. Moreover, the misfortunes of that time arose from the bane- 
ful thought contained in the word Restoration, which, taken literally, 
and seeming to some a threat and to others a promise, became the war 
cry of those frightened at the return of abuses, and the password of the 
new crusaders ready to go to war "for God and the King," that is, for 
the reestablishment of their privileges. In politics one changes by advanc- 
ing and does not restore by receding; society is made up of elements so 
fluctuating and variable that no one generation resembles another. 

Efforts to Retain the Old Order. — The Revolution of 1789, under- 
taken to secure the greatest possible degree of liberty for the individual, 
had, on the contrary, increased the strength of the government in the 
countries in which it had momentarily triumphed, as well as in those 
that had felt only the rebound. Twenty-three years of war had accus- 
tomed the peoples to paying a larger amount of the blood tax as well as 
the money tax; and not only did they pay more, but conscription or obli- 
gatory service had taken the place of voluntary enlistment. Besides, 
administrative authority, formerly scattered through many intermediary 
bodies, had wholly reverted to the prince, and energetic centralization 
had given all the national forces back into his hands. The do-as-they- 
please governments were therefore stronger in 18 15 than in 1739; they 
had more resources for commanding obedience; and they found con- 
fronting them fewer of those traditional obstacles that seem so fragile 
and are occasionally so resistant. Leipzig and Waterloo had made them 
masters of the world; they professed to organize their conquest so as to 
restore order to it, and that order soon seemed to them as if it could be 
secured 'only by arresting every movement, that is, by suppressing the 
new life that was to them, as Frederick William IV expressed it, only 
"the contagion of impiety." Victorious over the Revolution in arms, 
they wished to be so likewise in institutions and implacable severity; some 
clever men even thought that the popular passions would render a useful 



Reconstruction and Reaction after Napoleon's Fall 497 

service to the good cause, and, in certain places, a hunt after Liberals 
was begun by turning the populace loose on their scent. At Palermo 
and Madrid the constitutions of 1812 were abolished and absolute power 
was restored; at Milan the Austrian superseded the French Code, and 
cannon planted on the chief square of the city, ready to be fired, served 
as the symbol for the regime that was restored. The Papal States and 
Piedmont returned to the condition in which they had bee-n in 1790. 
Some went even farther back than that date; institutions of Joseph II 
in Austria, of Leopold I in Tuscany, and of Tanucci in Naples, regarded 
as the cause of evil, were condemned; and, so as to prevent the return 
of those reforms "more abusive than the abuses themselves," a secret 
article of the treaty signed at Vienna on June 12, 18 15, by Ferdinand 
IV, declared: "It is understood that the king of the Two Sicilies, in 
restoring the government of the kingdom, will not admit changes that 
cannot be reconciled with the principles adopted by His Imperial and 
Apostolic Royal Majesty for the internal government of his Italian pos- 
sessions." Then, south of the Alps and the Pyrenees, the privileges 
of the clergy and the nobility were seen to revive and the Inquisition to 
flourish once more, while the professed friends of public liberties, often 
really as illiberal as their opponents could possibly be, took the road to 
exile, the prison, and even to the scaffold. 

General Dominance of the Privileged Class. — In Germany the 
princes forgot the promises of 18 13, except in Bavaria and a few pett) 
States of the former Confederation of the Rhine, on which French ideas 
had made a deep impression. As for Austria and Prussia, it seemed 
as if nothing had happened in the world for a quarter of a century; patri- 
archal rule was maintained there, defended by three hundred thousand 
soldiers on the banks of the Danube, by two hundred thousand on those 
of the Spree, and in both States by the immense army of ofl&ceholders; 
a nobles' league, the Prussian Adelskette, had even been formed to main- 
tain the distinction of classes and the fuedal immunities. The Tories 
continued to govern England in the direction of aristocratic interests; 
for example, in order to increase the territorial wealth of the nobility, 
threatened with eclipse by the personal wealth of manufacturers and 
traders, owing to inventions to be described later on, they enacted legis- 
lation on cereals (the sliding scale) which gave the English grain market 
to the landlords, even though the people might occasionally suffer from 
famine and always from dearness of provisions. 

The royalists of France would in like manner reorganize everything 
to the advantage of the great landowners and the clergy, and in the Chamber 

32 



498 Reconstruction and Reaction ^fter Napoleon's Fall 

of Deputies men spoke boldly of returning to the old regime, even through 
bloodshed. The Coblentz emigrants and the Ghent refugees were bent 
on being avenged for their tw^o exiles, and they tried it, in the official world 
by laws and judgments often dictated by passion, and in the multitude 
by murders which the authorities dared not or could not prevent or pun- 
ish. A royal ordinance proscribed fifty-seven persons; generals, includ- 
ing Marshal Ney, were condemned and shot; Marshal Brune and Gen- 
erals Ramel and Lagarde were assassinated; the provost courts, which 
passed judgment without appeal and had their sentences carried out 
within twenty-four hours, deserved their evil repute; and the restored 
monarchy had its massacres in the prisons, its outrages known as the 
White Terror, its executioners, and its purveyors of victims, rivaling those 
of the Convention. In Spain and Italy there were similar excesses. At 
Madrid Ferdinand VII imprisoned, deported, or condemned to death 
the too zealous partisans of the constitution of 1812 and the Josefinos 
or Afrancesados; in Naples the Calderari (boilermakers, tinkers), organ- 
ized as an o'fFset to the Carbonari (charcoal-burners), pillaged and assas- 
sinated on behalf of the minister of police, the prince of Canosa, who went 
so far in his acts of violence that the allied kings, dreading serious troubles, 
demanded his dismissal. 

Overzealous Partisans the Worst Enemies. — Louis XVIII also 
became uneasy at the too ardent zeal of his dangerous friends, more 
royalist than the king himself; and by an ordinance of September 6, 1816, 
which the ultras called a revolutionary measure (coup d'etat), he dis- 
missed the Chamber known as that of the Introuvables (Undiscover- 
ables, Matchless). That measure was in accordance with the public 
wish, for France was not wholly made up of "greenies." Despite its 
misfortunes, it retained singular vitality, and the ideas of 1789, partly 
preserved in the Civil Code had maintained in the country a liberal spirit 
that still gave to it the lead over the rest of Europe. If in the Charter 
granted the principle of national sovereignty was still veiled by a remnant 
of Divine right, at least France had been almost rid of venality in public 
office, arbitrary imprisonments and secret procedures; ordinary justice 
did not depend on influence; the treasury belonged to the nation; the 
laws were discussed by the representatives of the country instead of being 
made by the Prince, and in the courts and the Chamber of Deputies, 
publicity of debates gave powerful guarantees for the judge's impartiality 
and the lawmaker's wisdom, whose decrees and votes opinion criticized. 
It is true that equality did not always exist in regard to royal favors, but 
it was in the law and in morals, which would one day make it enter into 



Reconstruction and Reaction after Napoleon's Fall 499 

the practice of the government. The new legislature (November 4, 1816), 
especially after the renewal of one-fifth of its members, already in 18 18 
found itself animated with a liberal spirit, and, owing to the king's wisdom, 
the era of representative government was really beginning for France, 
just when it was disappearing from Spain and Italy, while the German 
princes were eluding the carrying out of Article 13 of the federal pact, 
which promised it to their peoples. Accordingly, though one hundred 
and fifty thousand foreigners still occupied France's provinces, eyes 
remained fixed on that country in which the new era had opened and 
seemed as if it would last. 

An Attempt to Effect Protestant Union. — Napoleon had declared 
in 1805 that if he could not have the Gallican form of Catholicism (sub- 
ordination of the Pope to the General Council and of the Church to the 
State), he would turn Protestant; and Gallicanism was dominant during 
the Restoration. A similar effort as to Protestantism was made in Ger- 
many that would not have lacked in greatness, if in human affairs great- 
ness could be the characteristic of works doomed in advance to failure 
from their very nature. The protectorate over Protestant interests in 
Germany had at first belonged to the house of Saxony, the cradle of the 
Reformation; but it had lost this honor by turning Catholic so as to obtain 
the crown of Poland. The Elector of Brandenburg seized it and the 
skeptical Frederick II himself exercised it. After 18 15 Frederick William 
III, from religious zeal and monarchical interest, tried to discipline the 
sects sprung from the Reformation, so as to set up Protestant unity against 
Catholic unity, Berlin against Rome, the king of Prussia against the 
Pope in the Vatican, by uniting the members of all denominations, even 
those of England, in a single Evangelical Church. He built a temple 
for them; he drew up the liturgy of the new worship, and on October 
18, 181 7, by way of celebrating the third centenary of the origin of Prot- 
estantism, he had a Supper celebrated at which a Lutheran minister gave 
him the bread, and a Reformed minister the wine, of communion. "They 
unite in nothingness !" Gans exclaimed, and he was right, for that union 
was the very denial of the Reformation, whose fundamental principle 
is freedom for individual examination. Frederick William's plan there- 
fore failed; but it seemed too useful politically to be abandoned, and his 
son, the emperor William, was to take it up again in a new form, that 
of the Church, no matter what name it might bear, subordinate to the 
Prince, and of the State as master in matters religious. "The theocracy 
of our time," said Royer-Collard, "is less religious than political; it forms 
a part of that system of universal reaction which has laid hold of us." 



500 Reconstruction and Reaction after Napoleon's Fall 

Accordingly, in spite of charters granted and constitutions consented 
to or promised, even in spite of the good intentions of certain princes to 
bring about reforms, the old regime, aided by the powerful organization 
of the Church or by the revival of religious feelings, strove to maintain 
itself or to gain new being in order to restore what the Revolution had 
destroyed — that mastery of wills and consciences, that patronage of the 
great, that dependence of the lowly, which to some seemed to have made 
epochs calm and prosperous. But, as in the time of Philip II and Paul 
IV, that reaction aroused oppositions which assumed all the forms that 
the vanquished or the persecuted too often give to their resistance. 

Liberalism in the Press. — Confronting the numerous party that 
mastered by the memory of former greatness and recent misfortunes 
wished to shelter society from the storms by placing it under the two- 
fold guardianship of monarchical faith and religious faith, there were 
to be found great multitudes who also cherished the memory of the ideas 
for which the Revolution and the national insurrections of the later times 
of the Empire had taken place. In Belgium, Italy and Poland there were 
patriots who did not accept the domination of the foreigner, and else- 
where all of them, former Freemasons or new Republicans, Liberals or 
Bonapartists, who from interest, sentiment or thought adhered to the 
institutions of 1789 or to those of 1804, and who also regarded them as 
necessary to good social order. They had among them men of heart 
and talent, who openly defended the new ideas in the tribune, in the 
countries in which the parliament houses had remained open; in the prse- 
torium, when a political case was being tried there; in newspapers and 
books, and even in songs, where censure allowed them to appear. Such 
in France were Benjamin Constant, Foy, Manuel, Etienne, Laffitte, the 
elder Dupin, Casimir Perier, Paul Louis Courier, Beranger, Augustin 
Thierry, Cousin and a host of others; in Germany some of the great 
patroits of 1803, such as Arndt, Goerres and Jahn, whom the Prussian 
police ere long persecuted so far as to forbid them to speak and write 
(suppression of Goerres's Rhenish Mercury in 1816, and of Jahn's BerUn 
lectures in 18 17); in Italy Manzoni, who, in his Sacred Hymns, strove 
to reconcile religion and liberty, Berchet with his patriotic Odes, Leopardi 
with his Canzones, and the gentle Silvio Pellico with his tragedy, Eufemio 
di Messina, in which Austria heard a war cry against the foreigner. 

An Age of Secret Societies. — These men, orators and writers, 
were the friends of free discussion and peaceful progress, the only course 
that is efficacious. But others, fanatics of a new sort, were agitating 



Reconstruction and Reaction after Napoleon's Fall 501 

in the shade and there organizing secret societies in which the impatient 
were dreaming of insurrections and criminals of assassinations. They 
existed in all forms and under all sorts of names — Knights of the Sun, 
Sons of the Black Pin, Patriots (1816), Bonaparte's Vuhures, etc. Some 
had already the international character which, fifty years later, other 
passions were to assume, and especially other appetites to feed upon. 
The Reformed European Patriots and the Friends of Universal Regen- 
eration proposed to unite the peoples against the kings, as their successors 
would wish, without distinction of country, to unite the poor against the 
rich, workingmen against employers, so as to bring about a revolution, 
no longer in beliefs or in institutions, but in the social order. The most 
famous was an old Guelf association, which owed its name to the fact 
that its members, the Carbonari, assembled in the depths of the woods, 
in charcoal-burners' cabins. It covered the countries of the Latin tongues, 
Italy, France and Spain. Greece had its Hetairia; Poland its Knights 
of the Temple and its Mowers, when Alexander's severities led the 
patriots to have recourse to the secret societies, the great agencies of the 
time. Even the victorious made use of them; they had the Sanfedists 
in Italy, those who formed the Army of the Faith in Spain, the Adelskette 
in Prussia, the Ferdinandische in Austria, and the Congregation every- 
where. 

Two societies peculiar to Germany, the Arminia and the Burschen- 
schaft (Comrades' Union), had succeeded the Tugendbund, dissolved 
in 18 15 by those whom it had so effectually aided in recovering or saving 
their crowns. These societies wished, now that the German Fatherland 
was rid of the foreigner, to put an end to its internal dissensions and the 
absolute or pseudo-Liberal governments of its princes. In October, 
18 1 7, on the very day on which the king of Prussia was trying at Berlin 
to take hold of the Reformation and make it a great means of govern- 
ment, an immense multitude was noisily celebrating at the Wartburg, 
the third centennial jubilee of Protestantism and the anniversary of the 
battle of Leipzig. But, after the winning of religious hberty and the 
assuring of national independence, it demanded the advent of political 
liberty; it hoisted the colors of united Germany, a passion which ever 
afterwards agitated the minds of all beyond the Rhine; and it burned 
in bonfires the books contrary to philosophical and liberal ideas, as 
Luther had burned the Papal bulls. "In the sixteenth century," they 
said, "Antichrist was the Pope; in the nineteenth he is monarchical des- 
potism." The prince answered this manifesto with the suppression 
of several universities. In the Prussian countries alone, four were closed 
and, "instead of a Constitution, Prussia had imprisonment." 



502 Reconstruction and Reaction after Napoleon's Fall 

Conspiracies and Assassinations. — Coercion produced its usual 
effects. Compressed force exploded. This physical law is shown also 
in the moral order, with the difference that, when coercion acts on ideas 
answering real needs, it exaggerates them and makes them more for- 
midable. For instance, students declaimed generous thought in the 
open air and the breweries; they were dispersed, they conspired in secret, 
and one of them became an assassin. In 1819, exclaiming "Vivat Teu- 
tonia !" Sand stabbed a writer sold to the Holy Alliance; another tried 
to kill the president of the Nassau regency; some months later, "so as 
to dry up the blood of the Bourbons at its source," a fanatical imbecile, 
Louvel, with a knife struck down the duke of Berry, who then seemed 
the last heir of the elder branch; and even in London Thistlewood plotted 
the murder of fourteen ministers at a dinner given by Lord Harrowby, 
president of the council. In all the States of the Holy Alliance conspiracy 
was permanent, and especially in France, Spain, Naples, Turin, the Ger- 
manic Confederation, and even Sweden. From time to time a barracks, 
tavern or university insurrection broke out, and a few heads rolled on 
the scaffold. The governments felt the ground trembling under them 
as at the approach of a great eruption, except in two countries, which, 
for contrary reasons, escaped these subterranean convulsions; Russia 
repressed them with its heavy mass, in which there seemed as yet to be no 
fermentation; the czar was even then lavish of promises and of liberal 
reforms in his German-and Polish-speaking provinces; and England 
warded off the storm by giving free scope to all sorts of ideas except those 
emanating from Ireland. Owing to the right of assembly, the malcon- 
tents had no need of forming secret societies and hatching plots there — 
Thistlewood's is an exception. But there were meetings attended by a 
hundred thousand persons with banners on which were displayed the 
threatening inscriptions: Rights of Man, Universal Suffrage, Equality. 
And these tumultuous assemblies were the occasion of bloody conflicts 
that forced the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act (18 17). 

Revolution in Spain and Its Echoes. — ^When the Spaniards, in 
18 14, had restored to Ferdinand VII the crown "won for him and without 
him,*' the deputies in the Cortes went to meet him at the frontier to pre- 
sent to him the constitution of 18 12. "Do not forget," they said to him 
with the pride of the old Aragonese, "that the day on which you will 
violate it, the solemn pact which has made you king will be broken.'* 
A few weeks later Ferdinand tore up this constitution, and forced reaction 
with such cruelty (reestablishment of torture) that the members of the 
Holy Alliance rebuked him. It v/as in vain (1817); and so plots were 



Reconstruction and Reaction after Napoleon's Fall 



:)^j 



multiplied with executions, and to isolated assumption of arms, an insur- 
rection of the whole army succeeded — Riego at Cadiz (January 5, 1820) 
and Mina in the Pyrenees proclaimed the constitution of 18 12. Ferdi- 
nand, abandoned by everybody, swore fidelity to it, "since such was the 
will of the people;" and the same day he banished the Jesuits, his ad- 
visors; he abolished the Inquisition, whose property was confiscated to 
meet the public debt, and he restored liberty of the press. The two con- 
trary principles disputing the world with each other met again, there- 
fore, in what had fallen on March 9, 1820, in Spain, and what had arisen 
there at the same time. 

The Spanish revolution had its echo at Lisbon (August), Sicily and 
the Neapolitan kingdom (July), Benevento and Ponte Corvo, the States 
of the Church, and Piedmont, whose king abdicated (March, 1821), and 
some were already thinking of setting up an Italian confederation, as 
Napoleon III was to aim at doing, or a kingdom of Italy, as events were 
to decree. The movement reached even Turkey, where Rumanians 
and Greeks flew to arms (March and April, 1821). The whole south 
of Europe was returning to the Liberal ideas; in the rest of the continent 
fermentation was increasing and, beyond the Atlantic, the Spanish col- 
onies were setting themselves up as independent republics, as the English 
colonies had done forty years before. There are moral contagions as 
active as the physical — a breeze of liberty was passing over the world. 
It was agitating even old England in the hands of the Tories and reawaken- 
ing Poland, where the czar had changed from kindness to severity. He 
established censure on all writings published in the kingdom (1819); 
he closed the diet of 1820 with harsh words, and ere long he would say 
that the Polish nationality did not exist. To these threats Poland at 
once made answer w^ith secret societies, and every preparation was in 
progress for a great insurrection. 

The Holy Alliance Policing Europe. — It seemed, then, as if the 
Holy Alliance was about to be defeated by the mere movement of life 
in the nations. Scarcely five years had passed over the edifice so labor- 
iously erected in 18 15, and already it was tottering. To prevent its fall- 
ing into ruins, the congresses of sovereigns were multiplied, and a man 
of great ability, Prince Metternich, undertook the direction of it. He 
was ruling Austria; to that State made up of so many patches every dis- 
turbance was dangerous. Accordingly Metternich adopted as a rule 
of politics the maintenance of the actual state of affairs in everything 
and ever)nvhere, and he succeeded in instilling into the impressionable 
mind of the czar Alexander the idea that, after having defended civiliza- 



504 Reconstruction and Reaction after Napoleon's Fall 

tion against despotism, he ought to save it from anarchy, even should 
all the armies of the coalition have to be put in motion to succeed in doing 
so. And it must be said that the activity of the secret societies, the per- 
manence of conspiracies, and the assassinations that dishonored the 
Liberal cause furnished only too many pretexts for military executions. 
As men had failed to understand that the best way to get rid of the violent 
v^^as to satisfy the moderate, they were about to repress with the sword 
that ends nothing, instead of forestalling with wisely calculated reforms 
so as to reconcile a part of the adversaries then in the field. 

Prussia was in tow of Austria and Russia; it was easy, then, for Met- 
ternich, once the czar was won over to his views, to effect agreement 
between the three powers. At the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (November, 
18 18) they had renewed their alliance of 18 15, and pledged themselves 
to meet in conference, either of sovereigns or of ministers, to examine 
the questions bearing on the maintenance of peace, or on which other 
"governments would have formally asked their intervention." This 
idea was made clearer later on in the declaration of the Laybach con- 
ference (February, 1821). "Useful or necessary changes in the legis- 
lation and administration of the States are to emanate only from the free 
will and enlightened and studied impulse of those whom God has made 
responsible for power." This was a fresh assertion of the Divine right 
of kings, with the consequence that the prince on whom his people would 
impose the contract called a constitution might call in the aid of his col- 
leagues in royalty. While France assented to this doctrine, England 
strenuously opposed it. Castlereagh declared in the British Parliament 
that a power has no right to interfere in the affairs of another power for 
the mere reason that the latter makes in its government changes that 
are not pleasing to the former; and that thus setting itself up as a tribunal 
to pass judgment on the affairs of others, it usiirps a power condenmed 
both by the law of nations and common sense. And in the country that 
owed its greatness and its liberties to the national insurrection of 1688, 
Wellington's friend and the Tory leader acknowledged, while censuring 
the revolutionary spirit, that "there are just and necessary revolutions." 
But England stood alone, and the Holy Alliance went ahead. 

Repression in Germany and Italy. — The congress of Carlsbad in 
Bohemia, after the assassination of Kotzebue (18 19), was composed only 
of German ministers. It was resolved there to place the universities 
and th(j press under strict super\ision, and at Mayence a commission 
of inquiry was set up that had to seek out and punish the enemies of the 
established order. A new congress, assembled in the Austrian capital, 
where it sat for six months (Novcr/bcr, 1819), studied the means of sup- 



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RUSSO-JAPANESE PEACE COMMISSIONERS AT PORTSMOUTH. 

Reading from left to right : Count Wltte, Baron Rosen, President Roose- 
velt, Baron Komura, Minister Takahira. President Roosevelt, who suggested 
and brought to a successful completion the Peace Conference, which terminated 
the war between Russia and Japan of 1904-1905, at Portsmouth, In August, 
1905, was applauded by the rulers and people of all nations. 



Reconstruction and Reaction after Napoleon's Fall 505 

pressing Liberalism, and one of these means was to ask the Pope for a 
bull against secret societies; but recourse was had to many others. The 
final act of the Vienna congress (1820) withdrew almost all the conces- 
sions that had been made in the joy of deliverance. The Frankfort diet 
was declared to be the only interpreter of Article 13 of the federal pact 
promising constitutions; the right of execution with the aid of the con- 
federate troops against all disturbers of the public peace, even without 
the assistance of the local governments, was conceded to it. The police 
of the Holy Alliance pursued the patriots of 1815, as Napoleon had pur- 
sued those of 1807. Newspapers and reviews were suppressed; the 
philosopher Fries and the naturalist Oken were dismissed; other pro- 
fessors and students were exiled; Gcerres was driven from Prussia; Jahn, 
Arndt and Welker were imprisoned. In France, after the murder of the 
duke of Berry, there was a reaction towards despotism that was to lead 
to revolution in 1830. 

For the time being, however, these measures seemed to restore super- 
ficial calm in the countries that were the chief seats of militant Liberal- 
ism. The congresses of Troppau (1820), Laybach (1821) and Verona 
(1822) proposed to suppress it in the two peninsulas in which it had just 
triumphed. There was no wish to make a distinction between just 
grievances and inopportune demands. The revolutions in Greece, Spain, 
Naples and Turin were represented in a circular note "as being of the 
same origin and worthy of the same fate." If no measure was taken 
against the Greeks, it was because Russia was interested in that revolt 
of its coreligionists which gave it allies within the Turkish empire. As 
for Italy, Austria took it upon itself to destroy there "the false doctrines 
and criminal associations that have called down upon rebellious peoples 
the sword of justice." A numerous army, which one hundred thousand 
Russians, in case of need, were to follow, set out from Lombardo-Venetia. 
At Rieti and Novara Pepe's and Santa Rosa's recruits could not hold 
out against the veterans of the great wars of the empire, and the Austrians 
entered Naples, Turin and Messina. Behind them the jails were filled 
and scaffolds were erected. Austria lent its prisons as well as its soldiers. 
There were sixteen thousand at one time in those of the two Sicilies, and 
in 1822 there were also witnessed in the kingdom nine cases of capital 
punishment for political offences. In Piedmont all the leaders who could 
be caught were decapitated — the others were executed in effigy. No 
insurrection had broken out in the States of the Church properly so called; 
yet four hundred persons were imprisoned there, and many were con- 
demned to death, but the Pope commuted the sentence. The Piedmontese 
Silvio Pellico, confined at Venice and then at Spielberg, has told with the 



5o6 Reconstruction and Reaction after Napoleon's Fall 

gentleness of a martyr what tortures were added to captivity by that piti- 
less policy. 

French Interference in Spain. — In 1823 that policy seemed to be 
successful. There was less conspiring, there were no more assassina- 
tions, and the insurrections had been crushed at one of the points where 
they had been most threatening. With its docile lieutenants seated on 
the various thrones of Italy, and with its army of occupation seated at 
all strategical points, Austria thought, in fact, that it had completed a 
lasting work of restoration, and to its allies it pointed with pride to that 
peninsula but lately so agitated where, from the foot of the Alps to the 
strait of Malta, it had brought about the silence of death. Then the 
Holy Alliance bethought itself of undertaking the same work beyond 
the Pyrenees. There savage outrages had been perpetrated on both 
sides. To dispel the suspicions which France had for a moment inspired 
by its hesitancy regarding Austrian intervention in Italy, Louis XVIIFs 
government asked that it go and suppress in Spain agitations that 
threatened to reach the southern departments of France. England, 
where irritation was increasing against the pretensions of the Holy 
Alliance to regulate the affairs of Europe, held aloof. Its ambassador 
at Verona, Wellington, had consented only to let France station an army 
of observation along its Spanish frontier, and he who had, since Castle- 
reagh had committed suicide, become its foreign minister. Canning, 
threatened in Parliament to recognize the independence of the Spanish 
colonies as a reprisal for the French expedition. 

The army commanded by the duke of Angouleme entered Spain 
on April 7, 1823. It had few opportunities to fight and encountered 
serious resistance only at Cadiz, which it besieged. On August 31 it 
captured by assault the strong position of the Trocadero, and this success 
brought about the surrender of the city. The French army had carried 
its liberal spirit into Spain. Its officers opened the prisons confining 
men whose crime was the spreading of the ideas of France, and Angouleme 
sought to prevent acts of violence on the part of a royalist reaction, and 
to stop arbitrary arrests and executions. But Ferdinand did not mean 
that his saviors should impose conditions on him. The military com- 
missions were implacable. Riego, seriously wounded, was carried to 
the gibbet on a hurdle drawn by an ass; at one and the same place fifty- 
two companions of a cabecilla were put to death. The counter-revolu- 
tion was effected at Lisbon as at Madrid. There the king declared the 
constitution abolished and restored absolute power for a few months. 
Despite the congratulations sent by the secular rulers and the Pope to 



Reconstruction and Reaction after Napoleon's Fall 507 

the honest but not brilliant French prince who had led this easy cam- 
paign, the elder branch of the Bourbons had not gained enough military 
glory by it to become reconciled with the country. Men saw in that expi- 
dition only French soldiers placed at the service of a knavish and cruel 
king, and the finances of France saddled with an expense of two hundred 
millions. But small as it was, that success inspired the reactionist minis- 
try with a confidence in their plans which the elections held under a pecu- 
liarly restrictive law further increased by admitting to the Chamber only 
nineteen Liberal Deputies. Yet the throne was being rapidly under- 
mined. 



CHAPTER XXXI 



Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 



Spain Loses Its American Colonies. — ^When Angouleme's father, 
the narrow-minded and reactionary Charles X, succeeded his prudent 
and moderate brother on the throne of France (September i6, 1824) 
absolutism seemed to be as firmly seated on the thrones of continental 
Europe as in the early days of 1 789. Nor had poHtical Hberty made much 
perceptible progress in England, though it had given its moral support to 
the Liberal movements in southern Europe. In 182 1, it is true, it had 
resigned itself to Austria's intervention in the affairs of Italy; but already 
in 1823 it had opposed, at the Verona congress, the French expedition 
against the constitutionalists of Madrid, but had not as yet, however, 
shown for the latter anything but barren sympathy. Irritation was increas- 
ing against the Holy Alliance; accordingly, when the allies, so as to extend 
their action to the New World, proposed to Canning through Polignac, 
the French ambassador in London, to study the means for bringing Spain's 
rebel colonies in America back to obedience, England's foreign minister 
answered that if any power united with Spain for that purpose, England 
would see to safeguarding its interests. As far as England was concerned, 
it was not a question of sentiment, and that poHcy must not be made more 
generous than it was; it was no doubt inspired with a Hberal idea, but still 
more with a mercantile concern. The country that had gone to war with 
Spain (1739) to maintain England's contraband trade with Mexico, did 
not mean to wage another war that might shut it out from the immense 
market opened to it by the former Spanish colonies that had won independ- 
ence and free traffic. But the poHcy o{ the future gained from that change 
by the assertion, this time categorical and threatening, of the principle of 
non-intervention. Without passing over to the side of democracy, England 
meant that the new governments would be left to get themselves, as best 
they could, out of their self-made difficulties, while offending the interests, 
ideas and passions of the peoples wishing to be no longer the subjects of 
any one man, but those of law. 

Spain had subjected its transatlantic provinces to a rule that necessarily 

508 



Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 509 

led them to rebellion. E\ery industry, all foreign trade, and many branches 
of cultivation, including that of the grape-vine, had been forbidden to the 
colonists. They had to extract from their mountains the gold and silver 
which the galleons carried to Spain, and to receive all manufactured articles, 
nay, even iron and building lumber, from the mother country. America, 
in a word, was a farm worked to exhaustion by its owner, the Madrid 
government. Atrocious penalties maintained this unnatural state; the 
smuggler was punished with death, and the Inquisition placed its authority 
and its courts at the service of that strange economical despotism. Insur- 
rection broke out in Mexico in 1810, when Napoleon's invasion of Spain 
prevented the mother country from sending aid to its viceroys; and it 
gradually reached all the provinces. In 1816 the countries composing the 
viceroyalty of La Plata proclaimed their independence; the next year Chili 
followed this example; by 1821 Peru, Colombia, Central America and 
Mexico were free; and the Spaniards now held but a few sections of the 
New World, including the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico. As no one 
could foresee the unfortunate dissensions into which these young republics 
were to fall, this defeat of absolutism in the New World reacted on opinion 
in the Old, and in this way the Liberal cause was strengthened. The 
chief hero of Spanish-American independence, Simon Bolivar (El Liber- 
tador), was almost as popular in Paris as in Caraccas. 

The Spanish American Question in Europe. — The Washington 
Congress recognized the new States without much hesitation. In 1822 
England was already disposed to act in like manner, though an act of 
Parliament had in 18 19 forbidden British subjects to furnish the insurgents 
with munitions of war. The French expedition beyond the Pyrenees led 
it, towards the close of 1824, to send to Spanish America, by way of reprisal, 
diplomatic agents empowered to negotiate commercial treaties with those 
who but recently could not obtain a single charge of gunpowder from it. 
In justification of the new policy. Canning addressed to the European powers 
a circular note in which, rejecting the Pilnitz doctrine, still the basis of the 
Holy Alliance, he strove to rob the wars against France of the character 
which they had had in the beginning, that of two hostile principles at each 
other's throat; he showed only what they had afterwards become, the 
struggle for the independence of the States. The coahtion, he said, had 
been formed against imperial ambition, and not against the de facto govern- 
ment estabUshed in France, nor out of respect for legitimist monarchy. 
And with cruel malice he recalled that in 1814, even after having excluded 
Napoleon from the throne, the council of the allies had thought of another 
than a Bourbon for the conquered crown. 



5 TO Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 

Imperial France, without intending it, had given hberty to Spanish 
and Portuguese America by overthrowing at Madrid and Lisbon the two 
governments that held their colonies in such close dependence. Brazil 
was still subject to the revolting severities of the old colonial system when 
the house of Braganza, driven from the banks of the Tagus by Junot's 
army, fled thither in 1808. The king whom his colony sheltered and saved 
had to remove the old prohibitions and inaugurate a Uberal rule which, 
under the form of royalty (1815), and then of a constitutional empire (1822) 
guaranteed to those immense provinces internal peace and increasing 
prosperity. 

England and Portugal. — The mother country did not wish, after 
the fall of Napoleon and the return of its former king, to remain behind- 
hand. In 1820 John VI was obHged to give Portugal a constitution which 
the intrigues of Don Miguel, his second son, and the defeat of the Spanish 
Liberals (1823) caused to be torn up. Upon the death of John VI (1826), 
his eldest son, Dom Pedro, ex-emperor of Brazil and lawful heir to the Portu- 
guese crown, also abdicated that crown, now in favor of his daughter. Dona 
Maria, after having granted a new constitution. The absolutists on the 
banks of the Tagus and the Douro, supported by those of Spain, at one and 
the same time rejected both the charter and the child-queen. To Greajt 
Britain Portugal was a farm and a market; many Englishmen owned vast 
domains there; its wines went to London and all its industry came from 
England. A victory of the absolutists at Lisbon appeared to Canning as 
a defeat for his country's influence and interests. He promised support to 
the Portuguese regency, and on December 11, 1826, he announced in 
Parliament the measures adopted to this effect. His speech created a great 
sensation because, for the first time since 18 15, a great power proclaimed 
the truth as to the moral state of Europe. Canning recalled that when 
France had crossed the Pyrenees to restore to Ferdinand VII the powers 
which his subjects had taken from him, England, without an army and 
extravagant expenses, had taken a hemisphere from that restored monarch, 
and with a single stroke of the pen had restored the balance of the Old 
World bv giving existence to the New. His adverse reference to the Holy 
Alliance disturbed Prince Metternich, who accused him of wishing to 
unchain the Revolution once more, but it gave joy to the Liberals in every 
country. A medal struck in France in honor of Canning bore these words: 
"Civil and religious liberty throughout the whole universe." England's 
intervention in Portugal, "authorized by the former treaties," was, more- 
over, much less brilliant than the minister's eloquence. Don Miguel's 
undertakings, checked for a time, had free sway after Canning's premature 



Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 511 

death (August 8, 1827). Later on we will see this question settled by the 
triumph of a new poHcy of the western powers. 

The Revolt of the Greeks. — Just when new republics came into 
existence in Spanish America, an ancient State was struggling for revival 
in southeastern Europe. A few days before his death Canning had signed 
the treaty of London, by which three of the five great powers promised 
to compel the sultan of Turkey to recognize the independence of the 
Greeks. The insurrection of that people, long fomented by Russia and 
made inevitable by the cruelty of the Turks, had broken out in earnest 
in 1 82 1. The governments, even the English, at first condemned it, 
because that struggle compromised the existence of Turkey, whose preser- 
vation seemed necessary to the preservation of England's Indian empire. 
"British Liberalism,'* said Chateaubriand, "wears the liberty cap in 
Mexico and the turban at Athens." As for the Holy Alliance, it saw 
in that insurrection only a revolt, and, by a strange application of the 
doctrine of Divine right, it pretended that its principle of legitimacy had 
to protect the throne of the head of the Osmanlis. "Do not say Greeks," 
Nicholas said one day in answer to Wellington, who was speaking to him 
of England's sympathy for them; "do not say Greeks, but insurgents 
against the Sublime Porte. I will no more protect their revolt than I 
would wish to see the Porte protect a sedition among my subjects" (1826). 
A few months later, it is true, that language was superseded by acts, far 
from being in keeping with it. The reason was that opinion in favor 
of the Hellenes was becoming irresistible; the whole of Liberal Europe 
espoused a cause heroically supported for national independence and 
religion. Sympathy was aroused, even among the conservatives, by 
that magical name Greece, by that struggle of Christians against Mussul- 
mans, and in France as well as in England the finger of scorn would have 
been pointed at him who would not applaud the legendary exploits of 
Niketas, Bozzaris and Canaris, bold chiefs who led their palikars against 
the thickest ranks of the Janissaries and their fireships into the midst 
of the hostile squadrons. Poetry came to the aid of the insurgents — 
Lord Byron gave them even his fortune and his life. It was then indeed 
necessary that the politicians swim with the current. Into it Canning 
easily drew England, which, seeing Italy subject to Austrian influence, 
Spain returned to friendship with France, the Orient agitated by Russia's 
intrigues or threatened by its arms, was growing uneasy at seeing the 
northern powers thus come closer to the shores of the Mediterranean, 
to which higher commerce was about to return. In that sea it had indeed 
formidable supports in Gibraltar, Malta and the Ionian Islands; but 



512 Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 

they were fortresses, and not provinces, whence it observed more than 
it contained; and it was important for it not to let the Romanoffs have 
the mastery at Nauplia and Constantinople, as the Hapsburgs had it at 
Naples, Rome and Milan, and the Bourbons at Madrid. 

England and Russia in the Near East. — In order to prevent an 
armed intervention which the Russians were already preparing, the Eng- 
lish ministry tried to end the whole matter itself by making both parties 
accept its mediation. In March, 1826, Sir Stratford Canning, the 
foreign minister's cousin, thought he was on the point of wresting from 
the Porte and imposing on the Greeks, by England's mere pressure, a 
peaceful solution. He asked the latter to abandon "the great idea," 
Constantine's cross replaced on St. Sophia's, and to resign themselves 
to beginning with having a modest, but free country; to the Turks he 
said that the body of the empire would be strengthened by cutting off 
a member that carried a germ which would be fatal to the whole State. 
By this two-faced policy England counted on retaining as friends the 
two adversaries whom it wished to reconcile. But the Divan, misled 
by the successes of the Egyptian army, which had just captured Mis- 
solonghi and held nearly the whole of the Morea, haughtily rejected these 
conditions, and it became necessary to come to an understanding with 
the czar for common action, so as not to leave to him the advantage of 
his isolated action. France, as protector of the Catholics in the Levant, 
could not remain a mere looker-on; and Austria, which every movement 
frightened, stood by awaiting events and reserving its strength, while 
Prussia, which had not then the great ambitions of later times, was, 
moreover, too far from the events to interfere in them. It was three 
powers only, then, France, Russia and England, that pledged themselves 
by the treaty of London (July 5, 1827) to put an end to the war of exter- 
mination carried into the Peloponnesus by Ibrahim Pasha, son of the 
viceroy of Egypt. The three allied squadrons totally destroyed the Otto- 
man fleet in Navarino Bay (October 20, 1827) — an easy victory over 
which too much boasting was done and which, in his speech when open- 
ing the following session of Parliament, the king of England deplored 
as "an untoward occurrence." As the Porte did not yet yield, the Rus- 
sians, vvho had just conquered Persian Armenia, declared war against 
it (April 26, 1828), and fifteen thousand Frenchmen landed in the Morea 
to make as speedy an end as possible of that Greek question, at first so 
petty, which might now give rise to most formidable complications. 

The Janissaries Destroyed— Russia Successful. — The Turks 



Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 513 

were incapable of resisting. Mahmoud, the padishah, had recently 
exterminated the Janissaries, an undiscipHned militia that had deposed 
or strangled eight sultans, but also that had carried the green banner 
victoriously from Buda to Bagdad. Innumerable abuses had crept into 
that body, and it defended them with tumults, Mahmoud had that 
soldiery shot down because it refused to accept European drill from him. 
Between June i6 and 22, 1826, in Constantinople alone, ten thousand 
Janissaries perished by cannonade and musketry-firing, the bowstring 
or the burning of barracks; those of the provinces, being hunted every- 
where, either fled or hid. The sultan had destroyed the only military 
force of his empire before having organized another. Accordingly the 
Russians made such rapid progress (capture of Silistria, June 1829; of 
Erzeroum, July; of Adrianople, August) that the Turkish empire seemed 
on the point of crumbling. Austria, frightened at seeing the Russians 
at the gates of Stamboul, united with France and England to impose 
peace on Nicholas; and he, unable, in spite of a visit to Berlin, to entice 
Prussia to give him effective support, on September 14, 1829, accepted 
the treaty of Adrianople, which obliged him to restore his conquests, but 
gave him the mouths of the Danube, the right for his fleets to cruise in 
the Black Sea, that is, facility to make a direct attack on Constantinople, 
and the protectorate of Moldavia, Wallachia and Servia, the first two 
governed thereafter by hospodars for life and the last by a hereditary 
prince. This treaty, which saved Turkey, turned the Danubian prin- 
cipalities over to Russian influence; but the allies hoped that the new 
Greek State, which was made a monarchy in 1831, would serve them 
as a basis for counteracting the czar's diplomacy in the eastern peninsula. 

Room for Improvement in British Affairs. — Since 1822 the 
Tories, or at least their policy, had lost the directing of English matters. 
The most influential minister, George Canning, a pupil of Pitt, had just 
passed over to the Whigs, and England, irritated at the haughty inter- 
ference of the northern courts in all the affairs of the continent, came 
to wishing to restrain its former allies by favoring the ideas which they 
opposed. In 1823 Canning caused the presidency of the board of trade 
to be given to Huskisson, whose tariff reforms opened wide breaches in 
that fortress of taxes behind which the aristocracy sheltered its privileges 
and its fortune. This economical evolution, dictated by a liberal spirit, 
and far more serious, by reason of its consequences, than many political 
revolutions, was going to encroach gradually on all parts of the industrial 
world and to give work to the poor; to many, comfort; to all, the habit 
and need of individual and free action. Ireland was a prey to frightful 
33 



514 Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 

poverty, the result of most unjust legislation. A member ot Parliament 
truly said of it that the Indian's wigwam of the New World was more 
habitable than the poor Irishman's cabin; he had seen peasants in Kerry 
offering to work for twopence a day. This condition could be changed 
only when the inhabitants of that unfortunate country \vould plead its 
cause in Parliament, and the Irish Catholics were prohibited from exert- 
ing any real political influence. Canning did not succeed in freeing them 
from this servitude, as the Lords rejected the relief measure he had forced 
through the Commons; but two years after his last speech in their favor 
(March, 1827), ^^^ Robert Peel himself was to be obliged to introduce 
the emancipation bill and have it adopted (1829). In 1807 Parliament 
at the pious entreaties of Wilberforce, had voted the abolition of the slave 
trade. Now it was desired that, like the Convention in France (1794), 
it would decree the liberation of the slaves. Canning rejected sudden 
freedom, but proposed a large number of improvements that made the 
slave a man and partly opened for him the door to liberty. This humane 
law of 1825 was to lead a few years later (1833) to the abolition of slavery. 
The British Parliament, then, was at last beginning to foster gen- 
erous ideas; but that great body was not regarded as liberal enough, and 
justly so, for the aristocracy held the House of Lords by the hereditary 
right of primogeniture, and the House of Commons by its younger mem- 
bers and its clients, whom it sent there through the "rotten boroughs." 
Twelve families disposed of one hundred seats at Westminster, and 
sometimes sold seats for cash. Villages with seven or eight families sent 
two members each to the lower House; Gatton and Old Sarum had only 
one householder, who held the election all by himself, while the large 
city of Manchester had neither elector nor representative. Accordingly, 
a powerful association had been formed, the Birmingham Union, to arouse 
the country on the two questions of Parliamentary reform and the repeal 
of the laws concerning cereals, so as to make bread cheap. Of these two 
reforms, the former was to be brought about in 1832, but the other would 
have to wait fourteen years longer. By free discussion and little or no 
tumult England was being transformed, and the prosperity of the country 
was gaining thereby. In 1824 Canning was able to make a very large 
reduction of taxes, to create a sinking fund for the national debt, and to 
reduce the duties on rum, coal, silks and woolens — measures favorable 
to industry, commerce, and the public credit. 

France under Charles X. — Th new king was a pleasant old man 
of limited intelligence and education. His mind seen ed closed against 
the lessons of experience. In 1789 he had given the signal for the emi- 



Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 515 

gration. He had learned nothing, nor had he forgotten anything; and 
he paid no heed to his brother when Louis, on his deathbed, said to him 
as he placed his hand on the head of the duke of Bordeaux (the duke of 
Berry's posthumous son) : "Let Charles X keep the crown for this 
child." He thought it was his special mission to restore the old monarchy. 
"In France," he said, "the king consults the Chambers; he takes into 
most serious consideration their opinions and remonstrances; but when 
the king is not persuaded, his will must be carried out." These words 
were already the rejection of the Charter, and after that men need not 
be astonished at his coming at last to violating it. In the very beginning 
of his reign he asked the Chambers, through Villele, to grant an indem- 
nity of a thousand millions for the emigrants, whose property had been 
confiscated for treason, the restoration of convents for women, that of 
the law of primogeniture, and two laws or extreme severity against the 
press and crimes committed in churches (sacrilege law). The new 
"matchless" Chamber granted everything; there w^as resistance only in 
the Chamber of Peers which by that opposition won public favor for a 
few days. In May, 1825, the new monarch revived the solemnity of 
anointing with the traditional ceremonial, the old oath, and the royal 
touching for the king's evil (scrofula). That royal and religious festival 
was answered by a popular manifestation. One of ,the leaders of the 
Liberal party. General Foy, had just died. A hundred thousand persons 
followed his body to the grave, and a national subscription provided for 
the future of his children. Villele dismissed from the army a large num- 
ber of old generals who had spent their life defending France. There 
was a general uprising against the king. New elections were held, and 
showed to his disadvantage. Disturbances broke out, especially at Paris. 
Charles X had to dismiss Villele and take the moderate Martignac as 
his prime minister (January, 1828). He even consented to publishing 
ordinances against the Jesuits, who were fiercely denounced by the Gal- 
ileans as well as by unbelievers; but Charles soon returned to absolutism 
and Gallican Catholicism became unpopular with him. 

Condition of the World in 1828. — ^Without any revolution brought 
about by the violent, but not without persevering efforts on the part of 
wise men, France with Martignac, England with Canning, and Portugal 
through Dom Pedro had returned to the Liberal tradition. Spain was 
about to be brought back to it by a change in the law of succession. In 
the New World ten republics had come into existence, and the only mon- 
archy remaining there had made itself constitutional; on the old conti- 
nent a new State, the v/ork of sentiment as much as of politics, had taken 



5i6 Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 

its place among the nations, but on the side of free institutions. In Italy, 
and especially at Milan and Rome, in Germany, in Hesse, Baden, Bruns- 
wick and Saxony, a confused fermentation was announcing to unpop- 
ular governments that the time for reforms had come, unless men wished 
to see the revival of that of revolutions. In Belgium and Poland there 
was in preparation, under the direction of the clergy, the insurrection 
of nationalities and religions which opposing religions and nationalities 
wished to oppress. Lastly, commerce and industry, which had been 
developed in an era of peace, literature, which was animated by a reno- 
vating breath, and the periodical press, which was becoming a power, 
had favored the progress of public spirit in the direction of independence 
of the peoples and liberty for individuals. Everything, then, was advis- 
ing the governments to keep in the great liberal current that was travers- 
inty the world from pole to pole, from Paris to Lima. Unfortunately, 
there were princes and ministers still trying once more to resist that force 
of things which some call Providence or fate, and vv^hich to others is the 
necessary result of a myriad of causes, great and little, by which the com- 
mon life of a nation and of mankind is determined. 

Dom Miguel in Portugal, Don Carlos in Spain. — Absolutism, 
astonished and uneasy at its reverses, made a supreme effort to regain 
the countries which had just escaped from it. The signal came from 
Vienna, which was as it were its citadel, under the direction of Prince 
Metternich. Dom Miguel had taken refuge there, and thence kept 
Portugal incessantly in agitation so as to overthrow his niece. Dona Maria. 
Dom Pedro thought of saving his daughter's throne by placing at her 
side upon it Dom Miguel as her husband, whom he invested with the 
regency. The regent swore fidelity to the constitution (February 22, 
1828), and four months later had himself proclaimed king. This per- 
jury and usurpation supported by the English Tories seemed at first to 
be successful, and an abominable despotism raged over the whole country 
— thousands of unfortunates were assassinated, executed or banished 

(1829). 

Dom Miguel was the son of a sister of Ferdinand VII. Uncle and 
nephew were worthy of each other, and the king of Spain had given 
bloody pledges to the absolutists. Yet some regarded the uncle as too 
liberal. In 1825 Bessieres, an adventurer of French origin, had taken 
up arms to "free the king held captive by the blacks/' (constitution- 
alists); in 1827 the former soldiers of the Army of the Faith proclaimed 
as king his brother, Don Carlos, head of the extreme conservatives. This 
eflPort did not succeed; but it began a civil war which was to last for half 



Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 517 

a century. Dom Miguel had rebelled two or three times against his 
father. The representatives of the old regime, the Apostolics, as they 
called themselves in Spain, were therefore as revolutionary as their adver- 
saries of 1820, and we need not be astonished at finding that same con- 
tempt of law in the spirit of their friends of France. 

Wellington's Ministry — the Diet of Frankfort. — Some time after 
Canning's death the Tories had returned to power (the Wellington min- 
istry, January 25, 1828) and had tried to give a different direction to the 
policy of Great Britain. Zeal for the Hellenic cause had at once relaxed; 
the protection granted to the Portuguese Liberals had been wiithdrawn; 
Wellington recalled the English division sent to the Tagus, by main force 
stopped an expedition of the constitutionalists, and recognized Dom 
Miguel's royalty (1829). -^^ home they fettered the importation of foreign 
grain, and refused emancipation to the Catholics, who were then almost 
exclusively to be found in Ireland (in 18 15 there were only twenty-four 
Catholic chapels in England; in 1845 there were five hundred). O'Con- 
nell, Ireland's great "Agitator," had long been moving the masses of 
his countrymen by the cry of "Justice for Ireland !" But liberal opinion, 
momentarily checked, soon regained sway. In 1828 O'Connell was 
returned to Parliament from Clare, and on presenting himself in the House 
of Commons refused to take religious test oath, repealed after his elec- 
tion at the instance of Lord John Russell, the Whig leader. He was 
unseated and at once reelected unopposed. The repeal of the test oath 
put an end to a stupendous religious hypocrisy by suppressing the obli- 
gation hitherto incumbent on members of Parliament or any office under 
the crown to prove that they had received the sacrament of communion 
according to the official rights of the Church of England. Thus were 
the Tories themselves obliged to become Liberals by passing the great 
Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, ^" which George IV is said to have 
dropped tears as he was reluctantly signing it. 

Italy, in the grasp of Austria's mail-clad hand, now showed no sign 
of unrest, and Germany was equally silent. In 1848 a Prussian ambas- 
sador, who was a personal friend of his king wrote: "Since 18 15 we 
have lived bent under heavy chains; we have seen every voice, even that 
of the poets, suppressed, and we have been reduced to seeking a refuge 
in the sanctuary of science." Yet reforms of material interest were 
effected (beginnings of the Zollverein or customs union). But, in con- 
tempt of the independence of the confederated States, the Frankfort diet 
had in 1824 renewed its declaration that it would uphold royalty every- 
where, that is, in order to obtain the slightest reforms the Liberals would 



5i8 Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 

have to triumph over the resistance of their respective sovereigns and 
of the armies of the whole Confederation, since it was the judge of the 
acts that might compromise *'the principle of monarchy." The law 
which in 1819 had for five years enacted a strict penalty against the press 
was repealed, and a commission was entrusted with examining the short- 
comings of education so as to give to the rising generations a mental 
training in accordance with the spirit of the Holy Alliance. In the last 
place, as the debates of the diet, hitherto public, seemed to agitate men's 
minds, that assembly resolved to deliberate thereafter behind closed doors 
— the federal government, like the Venetian Inquisition, was hiding in 
the shade. Alexander adopted the same course in regard to the Polish 
diet (1825). What efforts to suspend life ! 

Russia under Nicholas I. — So much was not needed by those who 
wished to stop it in Russia, for there almost the whole nation was as yet 
summed up in one man, the czar. The prohibition issues by Alexander 
as to importing into Russia books treatmg of politics "in a sense con- 
trary to the principles of the Holy Alliance" had been an embarrassment 
to very few readers. Yet that moral contagion, which could not be stopped 
by a line of customhouses, crossed the frontier, and the new ideas were 
winning a few men here and there. Alexander's last moments were 
clouded by the discovery of a formidable conspiracy that had been propa- 
gated even in the army. "What have I done to them, then ?" he sadly 
asked. "Nothing, Sire, unless it be that you have assumed God's part 
on earth by wishing to be the intellect and the will of sixty millions of 
souls," a by-stander might have answered, and that even in Russia there 
were already men who believed that that part was ended. When Alex- 
ander had expired at Taganrog (December, 1825) and his brother, the 
grand duke Constantine, voluntarily renewed his renunciation of the 
crown, a third son of Paul I, Nicholas, was proclaimed czar. He was a 
man of iron, severe to others as to himself, convinced that he was a repre- 
sentative of the Divine will, and acting accordingly with the most perfect 
tranquillity of soul, w^hether he ordered the punishment of an individual, 
the agony of a people, or a war to carry off a million men. The plot begun 
under Alexander continued. Some of the conspirators proposed to over- 
throw czarism and unite all the slavic peoples in a federal republic like 
the United States, while others would oblige it to capitulate by imposing 
a constitution upon it. They had won several regiments over to their 
cause. On the day on which the St. Petersburg garrison was to take 
the oath to the new prince, sedition broke out, but before night it was 
suppressed; after a few executions in the provinces, Russia acknowledged 



Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 519 

its master in that prince, who, for nearly thiny years was to Europe the 
haughty and omnipotent personification of autocracy. 

France under Polignac. — ^Thus in Germany, Russia, and the 
Iberian and Italian peninsulas the Liberal spirit was once more coerced 
and the allies of 1815 seemed to have again been victorious. In Great 
Britain it was reawakening, but under the prudent restraint of the Tories. 
There remained France, whose privilege it had been to stir the world. 
To what side was it now going to incline ^ If it peacefully continued 
its Liberal evolution, the new life would radiate abroad, without causing 
a shock, and with a penetrating force that would have become irresistible. 
As long as Martignac remained at the head of the government, the Liberals 
retained their hopes. Unfortunately Charles X was not in sympathy 
with his ministry. After eigheen months he found his patience exhausted 
and, on August 8, 1829, taking advantage of a check imprudently inflicted 
on his ministers by the Chamber, on a measure of secondary interest, 
he put Polignac in Martignac's place. This choice was a declaration 
of war on the country by royalty, and a crisis became inevitable. For 
ten months the opposition press kept repeating to the government that 
it would necessarily lead to a revolution, and, in their answer to the king's 
speech, the deputies declared that the ministry had not their confidence. 
The Chamber was dissolved, but the signers of the address were all re- 
elected, and royalty, vanquished in the elections decided to make for 
itself an 18 Brumaire, that is, a revolution. It was encouraged in this 
course by a military success, an expedition to Algiers, undertaken to 
avenge an affront offered to the French consul. An army of thirty-seven 
thousand men, commanded by Bourmont, embarked at Toulon, and on 
June 13, 1830, landed on the African coast. The Algerians being beaten 
and driven into the mountains, the city was at once attacked, and on 
July 4 its possesson was assured by the capture of the commanding fort 
called the Emperor's Castle. The treasure amassed by the plundering 
deys paid the expenses of the expedition that planted the French flag 
on the soil of Africa to remain there. 

The French Revolution of 1830. — On the 26th of the same month 
there appeared ordinances suppressing liberty of the press, annulling the 
last elections, and creating a new electoral system. This was an over- 
throwing of the public liberties and a violation of the Charter that had 
been the condition on which the Bourbons had returned to the throne 
of their fathers. The magistracy declared the ordinances illegal, and 
Paris answered the court's provocation with the three days of July 27, 



52 o Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 

28 and 29, 1830. Resistance was lawful this time, since the middle class 
and the common people were fighting against those who had violated 
the constitution. Despite the bravery of the royal guard and the Swiss, 
Charles X was vanquished. When he abdicated in favor of his grandson, 
the duke of Bordeaux, he was answered in the language of revolutions: 
"It is too late,'* and he again took the road to exile. Six thousand men 
had fallen dead or wounded, victims of the obstinacy of an old man who, 
as a royalist expressed it, "had constituted his government in a way 
opposed to society, as if he existed against it, to belie and brave it." With 
almost unanimous acclamations France welcomed that separation from 
the men and ideas of 1815. In taking up again the flag of 1789, it seemed 
also to regain possession of itself and of the liberties which the Revolution 
had promised, but had not yet given, and it was going to separate religion 
respectfully from politics so as to restore it to the place it should never 
have left, the temple and the individual conscience, a programme that 
has not yet been permanently carried out. With the fall of absolutism 
Gallicanism also received a fatal blow. 

La Fayette said as he pointed out the duke of Orleans to the people 
at the City Hall: "There is the best of republics.'* Many thought like 
La Fayette. The prince's private virtues, his fine family, his former 
relations with the leaders of the Liberal party, the carefully revived mem- 
ories of Jemmapes and Valmy, his citizen habits, and the popular edu- 
cation given to his sons in the public schools — all these things encouraged 
hopes. The head of the younger branch of the house of Bourbon was 
proclaimed king as Louis Philippe on August 9, after having sworn to 
observe the revised Charter. The changes then made in the constitu- 
tional pact or, during the following months, in the existing laws were 
unimportant — abolition of heredity for the peerage, and of censure for 
the press; a slight extension of the franchise; suppression of the article 
recognizing Catholicism as the State religion, etc. It should be noted 
that, if Charles X had violated the law, so had the Chamber afterwards, 
for the deputies had disposed of the crown and remodeled the constitu- 
tion without a mandate from the country. This was to be an irremediable 
cause of weakness to the Orleans dynasty, because the government, coming 
from a fact and not from a principle, would find neither the strength given 
of old by legitimacy nor that given afterwards by the national law. 

Electoral Reform in England. — At the first session of the British 
Parliament held after the revolution in France, the Tory ministry was 
overthrown, in spite of the fame of its head, Wellington (November 2, 
1830). The Whigs assumed the management of affairs, and introduced 



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Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 521 

a bill for electoral reform that suppressed sixty "rotten" boroughs, gave 
representatives to the cities that had none, and created a multitude of 
new voters by lowering the franchise rate in the cities to ten pounds. 
This was much more liberal reform than that of France, and the number 
of voters was almost doubled. England alone, with less than half the 
population of France, now was to have four times as many electors. For 
fourteen months the Lords resisted the Commons, the ministers, and 
even the king, as well as popular manifestations that gathered together 
as many as three hundred thousand persons. They yielded only to the 
threat of a creation of new peers that would change the majority in that 
house (June 4, 1832). The Whigs also made Parliament adopt two other 
reform measures — in 1833 the emancipation of six hundred thousand 
negroes, whose liberation cost England sixteen and a half millions sterling, 
and the following the poor rate in favor of the destitute. So as to per- 
suade the Lords to accept the Reform bill, Wellington, the Tory leader, 
had told them sadly that the time was past when the upper house could 
make its views prevail; they must now resign themselves to wishing what 
the Commons wished. The British aristocracy, the strongest and richest 
in the world, but that also which had for a century and a half shown most 
political wisdom, in these melancholy words announced its abdication 
as a ruling class. There remained to it a useful function which it has 
continued to perform, that of curbing over-hasty legislation; but this 
function it has persistently abused in regard to Ireland, and even as to 
labor legislation in England. France was naturally gratified at the 
political change in Westminster; it 'boasted indeed that the July revolu- 
tion in Paris had much to do with it, and regarded it as a retaliation on 
the British aristocracy for the latter's many acts of hostility towards France. 
But, granting this view to be correct, it was a bloodless retaliation, useful 
to both countries, for, by aiding in driving the Tories from power and 
putting the Liberals in their place, France won official friendship beyond 
the Channel. Against the cold and haughty attitude of the courts of 
Germany and Russia, Louis Philippe could point to the cordial under- 
standing with England, so that the two western powers, united for several 
years by community of ideas and interests, would restrain reactionary 
ambitions and favor the lawful aspirations of the peoples. 

The Belgian Revolution. — The first fruit of this alliance was the 
peaceful solution of the Belgian question. In 18 15 England had caused 
Belgium to be given to Holland as indemnity for the colonies which it 
wanted to keep. Besides, men had seen in this combination a means 
of checking and watching France on the northeast. But Belgium, which 



522 Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 

had the French language, laws and religion, felt the same repugnance 
as in the sixteenth century to being united with the Batavian provinces. 
The king of the Netherlands increased this antipathy by disagreements 
with the Catholic clergy and the court of Rome, by prohibiting the French 
language in the schools and the law^ courts, and by forbidding the students 
of his kingdom to attend foreign colleges. Writers were cast into prison, 
journalists were condemned, and by 1829 such was the irritation of the 
Belgians that innumerable petitions addressed to both Chambers pro- 
tested against the abuses of authority committed by the government. 
Accordingly, a month after the revolution in Paris, Brussels was aflame, 
all the cities of Brabant and Flanders followed its example, and the Dutch 
army was driven back within the citadel of Antwerp, the only part of 
Belgian territory that remained to it. 

England had regarded with displeasure this disturbance of the work 
of 18 15. It ever dreaded the occupation of Antwerp, that is, of the mouths 
of the Scheldt and the Meuse, by France, and the speech from the throne 
voicing the views of the Tory ministry had censured the Brabant revo- 
lution. The broader spirit of the Whigs, aided by Louis Philippe's 
moderation, prevented complications. At a conference held in London 
on November 4, 1830, the northern powers themselves acknowledged the 
impossibility of keeping united under the same sceptre two populations 
so different, and it was resolved to let a Belgian kingdom be organized, 
on the sole condition that the king would not be taken from any of the 
five royal houses whose representatives sat at the conference. Accord- 
ingly, v>7hen the Brussels congress had elected the duke of Nemours, 
Louis Philippe's second son, that prince refused for his house an honor 
that would have been a danger to France (February, 1831). A few 
months later another election called to the throne of Belgium the prince 
of Saxe-Coburg, whose wisdom won for the new State a prosperity that 
has never since been seriously disturbed. The conference completed 
its work by authorizing fifty thousand French soldiers to enter Belgium 
and drive out the Dutch. The surrender of Antwerp after a long siege 
(December, 1832) ended the question from the military point of view; 
but diplomacy spent over six more years in bringing about the signing 
of a treaty by both parties (April, 1839). The perpetual neutrality of 
Belgium was acknowledged by all the powers — that of Sv/itzerland had 
been so since 18 15. If this principle had been extended to the Rhenish 
provinces, the war of 1870 might have been averted. 

Liberalizing Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden. — In the coun- 
tries whose temperament as well as temperature is affected by the prox- 



Revolutions and Liberations, 1816-1832 523 

imity of snow and ice, passion is less active and action more restrained. 
After 18 1 5 Switzerland had been compelled to enter the Holy Alliance; 
and as fashion was not yet attracting the idlers of the world every sum- 
mer amid its mountains to leave much gold there it had as its chief 
industry the military services rendered by the Swiss regiments at Rom.e, 
Naples, Madrid, in France, and even in the Netherlands. Until 1830 
it was very deferential to the pov/erful of that time; at the request of the 
foreign ministers, it treated the press with severity, and set restrictions 
on the right of as)dum sought from it by refugees from every country. 
On learning that France was escaping from reactionary politics, in almost 
every canton men asked for freer institutions, but only through legal means 
and the pressure of public opinion. Austria having amassed troops in 
the Vorarlberg and the Tyrol to intimidate the Liberals, the diet decreed 
a levy of sixty thousand men, and one hundred thousand went under 
arms. The sovereigns, threatened by the Belgian revolution and the 
ever increasing agitation in Italy and Germany, hastened to send assur- 
ances of peace. Left to themselves, the aristocratic governments of 
Switzerland crumbled; the patriciate lost its old immunities, and that 
wise people effected its political evolution without shedding a drop of 
blood. There were violent troubles and a few deaths only later on, at 
Neuchatel, whose inhabitants arose against their sovereign, the king of 
Prussia, and at Basel, where the middle classes of the city tried to retain 
privileges to the detriment of the rural communes (1831). 

Denmark did not have even these slight disorders. Of his own 
accord the king instituted four provincial assemblies, for the islands, 
Jutland, Schleswig and Holstein (1831). Later on he would give a gen- 
eral diet to the whole kingdom (1849). Sweden was still more patient. 
Moved since 1830 by the Liberal ideas, it would wait until 1840 to recon- 
struct its government with two elective Chambers, ministerial respon- 
sibility, and abolition of the hereditary rights of the nobility. 



CHAPTER XXXII 



Europe and the Eastern Question After 1830 



General Condition of Europe after 1830.— It was not the July revolu- 
tion that was the cause of the terrible novelties which were witnessed in 
Europe after the three days' upset in Paris. Everything was ready in Eng- 
land for the fall of the Tories; in Belgium, Italy and Poland, for a national 
insurrecrion; in Spain, Portugal and the Germanic Confederation, for giving 
more force to the demands of the constitutionahsts. 1 he poUcy of compres- 
sion followed by the great States since 18 15 had prepared the inflammable 
materials on which fell a spark from the Paris battle. The fire then caught 
everywhere; at certain points it did its work and cleared the way for new 
edifices; at others it was momentarily kept in check or exringuished. We 
have seen some peoples pass from the regime of authority to that of con- 
tract, from royal or aristocraric right to narional right; and we norice 
that they all dwelt around France or had old relarions of friendship with 
it; we will now see those that, held down by powerful hands, strove, but in 
vain, to get on their feet. 

Under the Restoradon two questions only "confronted each other, the 
policy of the Holy Alliance and that of the Liberals; accordingly the his- 
tory of that period may be reduced to the subdued or the striking, the gen- 
erous or the criminal, struggle of these two principles. After 1830 this 
struggle conrinues, but becomes complicated with new interests. 1 he July 
revoiudon, which in some countries gives victory to the Liberal ideas, 
seems to promise it to others which it urges to insurrecdon; while the 
aUiance of 181 5, half broken, strives to maintain itself. If the western 
powers, France, England, Belgium, Switzeriand, Spam and Portugal escape 
from it for good, those of the centre and east, Prussia, Austria and Russia, re- 
main faithful to it. But the principle of free sociedcs broacens its do- 
main from day to day, Hke a sea eadng away its shrres and pushing its 
waves farther. It will be seen gradually advancing, agitadng Itah , shalmg 
Germany, and rousing Poland from its deathbed. In the preceding period 
the spirit of resistance had as its chief representative Prince Metternich, 
with his cold cleverness, his cunning polidcs, and his temporizings; the 



524 



Europe and the Eastern Question After 1830 525 

emperor Nicholas now deserves to be its highest expression by his impla- 
cable energy and his activity, and at the same time by the greatness of his 
plans. But new questions arise and make a diversion from internal concerns. 
An immense succession, that of the 1 urkish empire, seems on the point of be- 
ing opened, and men ask uneasily who the heirs will be. Egypt, that is, 
the shortest way to the Indies, is becoming civilized under a barbarian of 
genius, and the maritime powers dispute for influence there. Central Asia 
becomes the battlefield of the rival intrigues of Russia and England, while 
the barriers closing the extreme East are opened a little and are soon to 
fall before the commerce of the world. This is a new expansion of the ac- 
tivity of the civilized nations. From 1789 to 1 8 15 men thought only of 
victorious or vanquished France and forgot Asia, in which England was 
gaining strength, and the New World, where the American Republic was 
growing noiselessly. From 18 15 to 1830 attention, still concentrated on 
Europe, turns away from it for a moment only to see the new States of 
Spanish America arise. In the third period, it is from one pole to the other 
that one must go to follow the civilization which means to complete the 
taking possession of the globe by commerce or by war, its two powerful 
vehicles. 

Prussia Advancing to Leadership. — The extreme north of Europe 
and the whole west were entering into the movement started by the fall of 
Charles X and France's return towards what was wisest in the ideas of 
1789. Other countries would have hked to follow this example, but they 
found themselves hampered by bonds too strong to permit of their being 
broken, and their princes felt, in regard to what had taken place in France, 
a sense of aversion and wrath that was not always kept in restraint. The 
shock of the July revolution did not make itself felt, at least ostensibly, in 
the two great German monarchies. A powerful military establishment, 
the alliance of the government with the official Church at Berlin as well as 
at Vienna, the support of a numerous nobifity having as its miotto "God 
and the king, " and lastly the poHtical reserve of a middle class to which 
industry and commerce had not as yet given wealth and with it the feeling 
of its power and a pardonable pride, protected absolute power in Austria 
and Prussia. Frederick WiUiam III remained satisfied with loosening 
the bonds that held the press and with making censure less intractable. 
These were concessions devoid of danger, which he counterbalanced, 
moreover, with advantages resulting to Prussia from the completion of the 
Zollverein, a double work that turned men's minds away from the burning 
questions of government and prepared the way for Prussia's political 
leadership by means of its commercial hegemony (May n, 1833). 



526 Europe and the Eastern Question After 1830 

Changes in the Germanic Confederation. — Matters did not turn 
out this way in the small States. Brunswick, the two Hesses, Saxony, 
Hanover, Oldenburg and Bavaria were agitated by movements which 
displaced some princes, such as the duke of Brunswick and the elector of 
Hesse, and obliged others to concede chatters and reforms. But when 
Russia had made "order reign at Warsaw," when the French government 
had triumphed over the revolutionary spirit by its double victory over 
legitimists and republicans, the diplomats of Austria and Prussia reap- 
peared upon the scene and again put in motion the Frankfort diet, a con- 
venient instrument which they played to perfection. In June, 1832 the 
diet, ever presided over by Austria and under its influence, decreed that 
the princes did not need the cooperation of the representative assembhes 
except for the exercise of certain rights, and that these assemblies could 
not refuse the ways and means necessar}' for carrying out measures that 
interested the whole Confederation. A commission was instituted to 
supervise the deliberations of the Chambers, similar to commissions al- 
ready existing over the press and education — three suspects that Metter- 
nich never lost sight of. Another regulation directed the princes to lend 
aid to one another and to dehver up political offenders. Somxe months 
later (August, 1833), the two great powers, distrusting the activity of the 
diet and the energy of its commissioners, had the right conferred upon 
themselves to appoint a committee whose mission it was to stop revolu- 
tionary efforts and into wiiich they admitted the representatives of Ba- 
varia, so as to palliate the sort of abdication which the diet had made into 
their hands. Arrests and banishments were resumed over all Germany. 
The czar, having come to Miinchengratz in Bohemia to strengthen per- 
sonally the sovereigns of Prussia and Austria in their ideas of resistance, 
from them obtained the expulsion of the Pohsh refugees, who had to be 
deported to America. We see, then, how much Hberty remained to the 
thirty-nine States whose independence the Vienna congress had acknowl- 
edged. From its hatred of liberal institutions Austria was constantly 
urging the diet to encroach upon the sovereignty of the princes, so that 
the Confederation was gradually becoming an uncouth body which lack- 
ed but a head. Austria thought indeed that it would be that head; 
but when the ornamental veil that was shown at Frankfort would fall off, 
it would be Prussia that would appear victorious and menacing, with its 
motto: "Force takes precedence of right;" and Prince Metternich would 
find that he had toiled for half a century only to witness a victory for that 
unscrupulous revolutionist who would dethrone kings, humiliate others, 
and bring about the unity of Germany as much against Austria as it was 
against France. 



Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 527 

The Revolutionary Ferment in Italy. — Ferdinand II, king of 
Naples, encouraged by the mercenary fidelity of his Swiss regiments, 
was ready for an insurrection, v>hich everybody foresaw. Louis Philippe, 
his brother-in-law, had sent him a memorandum by General Pepe, indica- 
ting the reforms to be brought about so as to avoid a catastrophe. He 
read it, returned his thanks, and answered like Caesar: "They dare not." 
He was right as regarded Naples during his lifetime; but on February 4, 
183 1, Bologna arose, then the Romagna and Umbria, and a month later 
the Pope retained only the Roman Campagna and Sabina. Two brothers, 
Charles and Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, had offered their aid to the leaders 
of that undertaking, in which the former lost his life. Parma and Modena 
had also driven out their princes. The Austrians made this a pretext 
for crossing the Po to restore the fugitives, and at the same time they crushed 
the insurrection in the Romagna. The Italian patriots had counted 
on France; but the French government declared to the pov>'ers that its 
foreign policy would be regulated by the principle of non-intervention, 
yet it did not mean to war in order to make that principle a part of Euro- 
pean law. The Austrians, therefore, were left at liberty to over\vhelm 
the Romagnese, and to violate the agreements they had signed with them; 
but when they vvere seen settling down in Ferrara and Bologna as if they 
meant to stay there, Louis Philippe sent troops to occupy Ancona, a not 
very brilliant but yet useful protest,which lasted nearly seven years (1832-8). 
Following the example of the king of Naples, the Pope hired a small army 
of mercenaries. The five great powers, seeing the spirit of revolt kept 
up in a manner dangerous to the peace of Europe, had, at the invitation 
of France, drawn up a memorandum (May, 1831) in which they asked 
the Holy Father to admit laymen to the public offices, the municipal bodies, 
and the elective provincial assemblies, to estabhsh an exchequer tribunal 
and a council of State, and to reform the judiciary. Cardinal Bernetti 
had promised a new era, but, as soon as the danger was over, the old order 
was restored. From one end of the peninsula to the other, except in 
Piedmont and Tuscany, the severities of 18 16 and 1821 reappeared; after 
a riot at Syracuse, Ferdinand II ordered fifty-two persons to be shot. 
Never did princes and ministers more completely fail to realize the needs 
of the times and the dangers of an anachronous policy. Men failed to 
see that by repressing the reasonable aspirations of the constitutionalists 
they were producing Mazzinis and Garibaldis as the successors of Man- 
zoni and 'Pellico, Pepe and St. Rosa. 

Poland's Great Insurrection. — In eastern Europe the most for- 
midable and most justifiable of insurrections had broken out. All Poland 



528 Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 

had arisen and set up a regular government, organized a powerful army, 
carried on a regular war, and for some time kept all the forces of the Rus- 
sian empire in check. There also, as in Italy, men sought political liber- 
ties, but, above all, national independence. The movement began on 
November 29, 1830; from excessive prudence, after excessive rashness, 
the leaders did not seek to propagate the insurrection in the provinces 
outside the eight palatinates forming the kingdom such as the Vienna 
congress had constituted it. The partitioners of 1773 were again in accord 
to uphold their iniquitous work. While a hundred thousand Russians 
were marching on Warsaw, sixty thousand Prussians in the duchy of 
Posen and as many Austrians in Galicia guarded against the revolutionary 
contagion the parts of the Polish spoils that had fallen to them. Besides, 
the Vienna and Berlin governments agreed to intercept all communica- 
tions between the insurgents and Europe and to unite their forces with 
those of the Russians if the revolt reached their provinces. Prussia went 
even farther when, after the bloody battles of Wawer and Grochow (Feb- 
ruary, 1 831), Dembe and Ostrolenka (March and May), Marshal Paske- 
witch, despairing of forcing a front entrance into Warsaw, resolved to 
attack the city from the left bank of the Vistula. This bold and dangerous 
march separated him from his base of operations; Frederick William opened 
to him Koenigsberg and Danzig, from which be could revictual his troops. 
This was direct cooperation in the war and violation of the principle of 
non-intervention proclaimed by the western powers. Yet they made 
no serious protest, though the Polish cause was very popular in France 
and England. In these two countries committees had been organized 
that sent money, volunteers and arms to Poland; but at Paris as well as 
at London the government was firmly set on not interfering in a quarrel 
going on beyond their sphere of action. 

"Peace Reigns at Warsaw.*' — Louis Philippe negotiated so as 
to make believe he was doing something, and the British government, 
which itself held conquered nations in bondage, downtrodden Ireland 
and pillaged India, declared the czar's rights indisputable. Left to them- 
selves, the Poles had to succumb. On September 8, 1831, Warsaw fell 
after a heroic resistance, and Nicholas, erasing from the treaties of 18 15 
the articles conceding to Poland an independent existence with national 
institutions, made Russian provinces of its territory. The patriots were 
proscribed, suspects were robbed of their property, and Siberia was peopled 
with exiled Poles. Russian became the official language, that of admin- 
istration, justice and education. Catholicism was the religion of the 
country; very many of its churches were taken from it and given to the 



Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 529 

schismatics; and, while all Catholic propagandism was prohibited, religious 
apostacies as well as political desertions were not only encouraged, but 
often forced. Nicholas would have liked to suppress even the history of 
Poland; he at least wiped out its name — in the official documents Poland 
has ever since been called the Vistula Governments. Europe had 
anathematized the bloody executions formerly committed by religious 
intolerance; but now it had only barren protests against the at least equally 
implacable cruelties of political and religious intolerance combined, tear- 
ing up treaties which it had dictated and striving to destroy by tortures, 
exile, confiscation and the purchase of consciences the religious and patri- 
otic faith of a whole nation. But the victor took it upon himself to prepare 
the way for expiation by indulging the infatuation of his pride. Seeing 
himself so formidable, he even went so far as to believe in a Providential 
mission reserved for "Holy Russia" and its ruler, that of saving European 
order and restoring thrones to their old foundations. The age of the 
Latin and Germanic nations was ended, he said, and that of the Slavs had 
come; and from a simple question of race he drew a gigantic plan of domi- 
nation, the union of all Slavs under the czar's sceptre. This system, 
which came to be called Panslavism, was to produce another to the aggrand- 
izement of Prussia, Pangermanism. Then from the two countries pre- 
tending to be the most conservative would come the most revolutionary 
of intrigues and wars. Old dynasties would be dispossessed or threatened, 
and old popular rights would be trampled underfoot. But days of chas- 
tisement would come; the Crimean war humbled Russia and killed Nicho- 
las, while the internal events of 1905 and 1906 have been the natural 
reaction against his autocratic system. 

Revolutions in Spain and Portugal. — Ferdinand VII was ever 
the prince after the absolutists' own heart. At first he had refused to 
recognize the new king of France, and the duchess of Berry had his good 
will in trying to stir up rebellion. But, during the young queen Maria 
Christina's pregnancy (he had married her in December, 1829) ^^ unearthed 
a secret declaration by which Charles IV had revoked (1739) the pragmatic 
sanction of Philip V, which called females to succeed to the throne only 
in default of a male heir. This declaration was a return to the old law 
of succession which had made Spain great by uniting Aragon with Cas- 
tile. The king, moreover, felt no scruple about dispossessing his brother, 
Don Carlos, who had twice tried to overthrow him, and, Maria Christina 
having given birth to a daughter, Isabella, this child became queen upon 
Ferdinand's death (September, 1833), under the guardianship of her mother. 
The Apostolics, forgetting the national traditions and faithless to their 
34 



530 Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 

principle of the Divine right of kings, which had enabled Charles II to 
bequeath his peoples as a heritage even to a foreigner, took the part of 
Don Carlos, who prepared to gain the throne by force of arms. Conse- 
quently the regent, in order to save her daughter's crown, was obliged to 
depend on the constitutionalists, so that a family quarrel was going to 
bring the Spanish government over to the Liberal party; but a seven years' ' 
civil war was let loose on the peninsula. 

Don Carlos had at first taken refuge with Dom Miguel, who, aided 
by Marshal Bourmont, French legitimists and Portuguese absolutists, 
was defending his usurpation against his brother, Dom Pedro, supported 
by the effective sympathies of France and England. On June 8, 1832, 
the constitutionalists had seized Oporto; the following year the victories 
of St. Vincent and Lisbon had given them the capital; and, in the last place, 
the treaty of the quadruple aUiance, concluded in April, 1834, with England 
and France by Dom Pedro and Maria Christina, in the name of their 
daughters, the young queens Dona Maria and Isabella II, compelled, 
Dom Miguel to leave the kingdom (capitulation of Evora, May, 1834). 

The Carlist Civil War in Spain. — Beaten in Portugal, the absolu- 
tists saw that if they did not hold out in Spain, their cause was lost in west- 
ern Europe and compromised everywhere. Don Carlos raised the northern 
provinces, especially the Basque country, ever in love with its old fueros 
and hostile to Madrid centralization. The Carlist bands overran the 
whole Pyrenees region; under Gomez and Cabrera they penetrated to 
the neighborhood of Madrid, and Zumalacarreguy even succeeded for 
a time in substituting for these partisan raids, which effected nothing, 
permanent regular warfare that might bring the struggle to an end; but 
in 1835 he was mortally wounded before Bilbao. The Carlists had called 
to their aid all those whom the July revolution had vanquished or menaced. 
The followers of Henry V (duke of Bordeaux) naturally supported the 
Spanish pretender. But it was impossible for the northern courts to send 
him regular forces; the squadrons of England and France barred the sea, 
and the Pyrenees were very far from Vienna, Berlin and Moscow, whence 
the czar was wrathfully watching that struggle going on outside the reach 
of his hand. It was necessary to remain satisfied with secret encourage- 
ments and subsidies, which came especially from Naples and St. Peters- 
burg. On their part the western powers encouraged the formation of 
English and French legions that were veritable armies — that of France 
had as many as seven thousand men (1835). Thus the two policies that 
were dividing Europe, not daring to meet in direct conflict, were fighting 
at a distance and through intermediaries on the banks of the Ebro. The 



Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 531 

reason was that Austria and Prussia, feeling Italy and Germany trembling 
under their feet, hesitated to unchain a great war, and that Louis Philippe, 
in spite of the alliance with England, did not wish to risk peace and his 
crown by going beyond discreet and roundabout intervention. 

The war was attended with the horrors habitual to Spanish wars, 
though both parties had many volunteers in their ranks, some coming 
from devotedness to the cause or to serve their military apprenticeship, 
others from idleness and tourist curiosity, if not worse, to vent uneasy 
ardor amid the emotions of combats that were not always dangerous; 
instead of hunting the wolf or the wild bear on his domain, a spring or an 
autumn was spent in chasing a Christinos or a Carlist through the moun- 
tains. That lasted until 1840, amid bloody vicissitudes and political 
shufflings that overthrew several ministries at Madrid. Espartero, whom 
the regent pompously made duke of Victory, put an end to the Carlist 
war, then drove out Maria Christina (October, 1840) and took her place 
as regent. Three years later he was in his turn expelled by Narvaez 
(July, 1843), and, under that rough soldier's hand, the Spanish monarchy 
remained almost constitutional, with the character of exaggerated con- 
servatism which Guizot was then giving to the July monarchy in France. 

Policies and Parties in France. — "The king of the French, "as 
Louis Philippe chose to style himself, could not claim that he represented 
the will of the people. Brought forward by the intrigues of La Fayette 
and others, he had been elected by deputies representing scarcely more 
than a hundred thousand voters in a population of thirty millions. Accord- 
ingly, there were many protests against his rule. In 1832 the duchess 
of Berry failed to bring about a legitimist uprising in favor of her son, 
meeting with little success even in Vendee. The republican party had 
taken up arms at Lyons (November, 1831), and then at Paris (June, 1832). 
Defeated in these first efforts, it arose again (April, 1834) in these same 
cities and a few others, but with no more success. A large number of 
insurgents lost their lives, and many others were sent to prison or driven 
into exile. Several attempts were made on the life of the " citizen king, " 
the most serious being that of Feischi (1835), whose Infernal Machine 
killed Matshal Mortier and many others. The king took advantage of 
this outrage to bring about the enactment of very strict laws against the 
press (September, 1835), and criminal procedure was very much sim- 
plified, to the detriment of the accused. In the preceding year the right 
of assembly had been restricted even more stringently than under Napoleon. 
Yet another insurrection, also unsuccessful, broke out at Paris in 1839; 
its leaders were condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted 



532 Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 

to life imprisonment. It was then the socialist party was first organized, 
on principles that had been preached by Fourier and Saint-Simon. Bon- 
apartism had also raised its head. Louis Napoleon, son of Louis Bonaparte 
(king of Holland), a dull but ambitious and tenacious young man, as 
unscrupulous as his great uncle, tried a rising at Strasburg in 1836, but 
failed, was arrested, and sent to exile in America. Returning to Europe 
in 1837, three years later (August 1840) he landed at Boulogne with a 
few adventurers who had nothing to lose, but again failed and was impris- 
oned in the fortress of Ham, from which he escaped to England in 1846. 
Nor did the party that had placed the duke of Orleans on the throne live 
as a happy family. Changes of ministry were frequent. Laffitte, made 
premier in 1830, gave way to Casimir Perier in 183 1, and the latter died 
in 1832. After holding the presidency of the council of ministers for 
six months, Thiers was superseded by Mole (September 6, 1836), and 
the latter by Marshal Soult in 1839. Ten months later he made way for 
Thiers (March i, 1840), whom the king soon dismissed rather than go 
to war with England over the Eastern Question. 

European Interests in Asia. — ^There are two, nay, even three, 
Eastern Questions. The first is centred on the shores of the Bosphorus, 
the second in central Asia, and the adversaries are the same in both, namely 
Russia and England. The latter needed to keep all the roads open that 
lead towards its Indian empire, and therefore wished to keep independent 
the States of western Asia, which the former, for the opposite reason, 
threatened with armed coercion or tried to fetter with its intrigues. The 
third concerns the farther extremity of the Asiatic continent, China and 
Japan, and interests all the maritime nations. Such questions are not 
solved all at once. We shall see all three of them begin in succession, 
and they will not have passed beyond the preliminary stage when the 
revolutionary movements of 1848 again disturb Europe. This portion 
of recent history, then, does not present the spectacle we have seen in 
the west, that of two political and social systems disputing with one another, 
in the name of contrary ideas, for the government of the world. Instead 
of a war of principles having an honorable origin, despite its acts of vio- 
lence and occasionally its crimes, we shall see a struggle of mercantile 
interests and ambitions which, though of imposing proportions, are none 
the less commonplace, for their motive is money-making at the expense 
of oppressed peoples. The two powers playing the chief parts in these 
events think only of winning provinces and guineas; and the morality 
of these undertakings is marked by the motive of one of them — the English 
forcing the Chinese at the cannon's mouth to poison themselves with opium 



Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 533 

in order to make up the deficit of the East India Company. Yet man 
sometimes performs a greater work than he intends, and rich harvests 
may grow in the furrows of war. After the violent deeds and highhanded 
robberies of Chve and Hastings, after the unjust wars and cruel sentences 
of the czars, India was to be covered with railways, the "Siberian Hell" 
was to be peopled with commercial communities, security was to return 
to the steppes of the nomads, and social life was to take root in the desert. 

The First Eastern Question — Constantinople. — ^We have referred 
to the vast plans of Nicholas, the pontiff-emperor whose States covered 
half of Europe and one third of Asia. To make them succeed he needed 
to restore Constantine's throne and sit upon it himself. From Moscow 
or St. Petersburg, commonplace cities, he could not look out as master 
of the world; Stamboul was the real imperial city, that from which one 
dominated Greece, half of the Mediterranean, w^estern Asia, and the 
two highways to the Indies through the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. 
Nicholas, who in 1829, under cover of the Greek insurrection, had advanced 
his troops as far as Adrianople and to within a few leagues of the Golden 
Horn, kept his eyes ever fixed on "the second capital of the Roman empire." 
Once on the Dardanelles and well established in that impregnable posi- 
tion, he would take up Napoleon's plan against English domination in 
the Indies, while France, ever held in the still existing shackles of the 
Holy Alliance, would in vain exhaust its strength and 'wrath in inert- 
ness. But if Austria was at first with the Russians against the Liberal 
ideas, yet their ambitious projects threw it into great perplexity. A half- 
Slav State, it dreaded seeing them penetrate into the Danube valley and 
wave the flag of Panslavism before the eyes of its populations of the same 
blood. As a maritime power, their settlement in the seaports of the Levant 
would ruin its commerce. Now, as a chastisement for the crime of 1773, 
the czar could no longer go by land to Constantinople without a passport 
from the Austrians, and the English continued to close the route by sea 
against him. By inviting Austria to take Galicia and Bukovina as its 
share of Poland, Catharine II had established it in the valleys of the Pruth 
and the Dniester, so that the road to be followed by the Russian armies 
to the Sea of Marmora vv^as a line one hundred and fifty leagues long, 
perpendicular to all of Austria's military roads and consequently capable 
of being cut at many points whenever the sultan called this power to his 
aid and opened the Danube valley to it. Certain of finding the Austro- 
Hungarian forces on this road and the English in the Dardanelles, Nicholas 
awaited fresh complications, and remained satisfied with imposing his 
haughty protection on the sultan. 



534 Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 

Decline of Turkey— Ambition of Egypt's Viceroy— Turkey 
was rapidly going down that incline of decay which it is so difficult to 
reascend. In 1774 it had lost the Crimea and the mouth of the Dnieper; 
in 1792, the left bank of the Dniester; in 1812, Bessarabia as far as the 
Pruth; in 1829, the mouths of the Danube and a portion of Armenia — the 
empire's bulwarks were escaping from it in succession; internally, Greece 
had become free; the Servians, the Rumanians and the valiant Montene- 
grins had taken to themselves national governments under the protection 
of Russia, and owed to the Porte only a light tribute. If the revolt of 
Ali, pasha of Janina (1820), had been suppressed, the sultan Mahmoud's 
reforms were for the time being weakening rather than strengthening his 
empire, because they aroused the indignation of the faithful and of the 
ulemas. In Europe Ottoman domination was, then, seriously menaced, 
and four or five million Turks, lost amid twelve or fourteen million Chris- 
tians, did not seem able to retain their mastery long. Europe's inter- 
vention had been necessary to save them by the treaty of Adrianople, 
and they held out in a small way by their old habit of command, especially 
by the divisions among their subjects, who, belonging to different races 
and religions, had opposing passions and interests. 

While everything was declining in the northern part of the empire, 
a new power was being formed in the southern provinces. A Rumelian 
adventurer, Mehemet Ali, had taken advantage of the disorganization 
of Egypt after the departure of the French to make a place for himself 
there and to seize power (1806). He had driven back into the sea an 
English corps that had seized Alexandria (1807), and strengthened his 
authority by the massacre of the Mamelukes (181 1). The Wahabites, 
fierce Islamite heretics, had captured Mecca, Medina and Damascus; 
he exterminated them in a six years' war (1818). His conquests in the 
upper Nile valley restored some pride to that empire which was receding 
wherever the Egyptian was not; and, after the terrible expedition of his 
son Ibrahim to the Morea (1826), men said he would have ended the 
Greek insurrection but for the intervention of the powers. Therefore 
in the Orient he had the double glory of religious restorer and invincible 
conqueror; and in Europe he enjoyed another popularity, that of reformer. 
With the aid of French engineers and officers he had created a war fleet 
and commerce, organized an army on the European plan, buil arsenals 
and workshops of every sort, and founded schools. In doing such things 
he had brought about a revolution possible only with one of the mildest 
people on earth, the fellahs, whom fifty centuries of servitude had accus- 
tomed to enduring everything without murmuring. Not only did he 
declare himself the sole owner of the soil, but he also regulated cultivation, 



Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 535 

and arrogated to himself the monopoly of traffic; so that he was not only 
sole owner, but sole producer and sole merchant in the whole of Egypt. 
Accordingly he was never short of money for his undertakings or of soldiers 
for his regiments. 

Conquest of Syria and Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi. — In all times 
the masters of Egypt have had the ambition to possess Syria and the large 
islands of the eastern Mediterranean, so as to have building lumber, in 
which Egypt is wholly lacking, and harbors to make up for the insufficiency 
of Alexandria, the only one the Delta possessed before De Lesseps created 
Port Said. In the preceding century, a Mameluke bey had even assumed 
the title of " ruler of the two seas." In reward for his services in Greece, 
Mehemet Ali had received the government of Candia, not enough for 
his ambition; he believed he was called to regenerate the empire or dis- 
member it, and for his share he at least wanted Syria, whose mountains 
seemed to him a fortress capable of covering the approaches to Egypt 
and controlling the second great commercial route between Europe and 
Asia by way of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf. Under the pretext 
of pursuing fugitive fellahs and ending a private quarrel with the pasha 
of Acre, Ibrahim Pasha attacked that place (1831) which had resisted 
General Bonaparte, captured it (May, 1832), and subdued all Syria. 
A first army of the Sultan's was destroyed in several encounters; a second 
lost the great battle of Konieh north of the Taurus (December, 1832). 
The road to Constantinople was free, Ibrahim hurried over it, and Mah- 
moud in terror implored his powerful neighbor. The Sebastopol fleet 
at once entered the Bosphorus, fifteen thousand Russians landed at Scutari 
and forty-five thousand crossed the Danube "to save the sultan." At 
this point France and England stopped the Egyptian army by imposing 
on Mahmoud and his vassal the treaty of Kutayeh (May, 1833), which 
gave Syria to Mehemet Ali. The Russians were once more compelled 
to retrace their steps; but they carried away with them a treaty, that of 
Unkiar-Skelessi (June, 1833), which stipulated an offensive and defensive 
alliance between the czar and the sultan, with a secret clause aimed against 
France and England to the effect that the Dardanelles would be closed 
against every foreign warship. The treaty of Adrianople had ended 
the first act of the great Eastern Question drama; that of Unkiar-Skelessi 
terminated its second. After having begun the dismemberment of Tur- 
key, the czar had just placed that empire under his protectorate, and, unless 
Europe set up an obstacle against it, that protectorate would soon be 
a mastery. 

Second Syrian War and Treaty of London. — Six years elapsed 



536 Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 

during which Mahmoud made every preparation to overthrow the pasha 
who had humiliated him. In 1839 he thought he had given enough dis- 
cipline to his army for it to be able to measure strength with the Egyptians, 
and he entrusted it with recovering the provinces which the treaty of 
Kutayeh had taken from him. But Ibrahim Pasha again defeated the 
Ottomans at Nezib, and by that victory for the second time opened the 
road to Constantinople (June, 1839). If he marched on that city the 
Russians would enter it on the pretext of defending it, and would not leave 
it again. France intervened and stopped the victorious Ibrahim. Con- 
stantinople was saved, but Alexandria was compromised. England, 
in fact, now certain that the Russians would not come to the Dardanelles, 
wished to prevent the return of the fears it had for a moment entertained. 
To it the surest means seemed to be to rob Mehemet Ali of Syria, It 
found this combination to be of advantage to it in two ways; for the Otto- 
man empire seemed thereby strengthened, and Egypt, where it was impor- 
tant for it that its influence should dominate, was weakened. France 
had then at Constantinople an interest identical with that of Great 
Britain — to keep the Russians away from that city; but in Egypt the two 
interests seemed opposed. France liked the victor of Nezib, that Ibrahim 
who in his tent was never weary of narrating French victories, and that 
old pasha, the child of his own works, who repaid France's sympathy with 
his esteem. French influence, then, was dominant at Cairo, and England 
was jealous of this, because it needed to be heeded there, since its sol- 
diers, travelers and uncumbersome merchandise took the Egyptian route 
in going to or coming from the Indies. Now, in covering Constantinople 
the French government made the mistake of not stipulating anything in 
Mehemet Ali's favor, and for the settling of that aff'air it accepted a Euro- 
pean conference at which it might count in advance on four votes out 
of five being against it. England had no difficulty in persuading the powers 
to break an agreement which, putting under the same control Toulon, 
Algiers, Alexandria, Beyrut, and the French, Egyptian and Turkish 
fleets, assured to France preponderance in the Mediterranean. The 
czar, to whom France was only a hotbed of revolutions and its ruler but 
a barricade king, seized this opportunity to make the English themselves 
apply the principles of the Holy Alliance. On July 15 England, Russia, 
and the two powers in tow to Russia, Austria and Prussia, without France's 
participation signed the treaty of London, which was to take Syria from 
the pasha of Egypt. 

The Straits Treaty and France's Isolation.— Thus was France, 
then, an outcast in Europe; the coalition was renewed against it. On 







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Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 537 

learning of this the country had an impulse of wrath; the government 
seemed to share in that outburst of national feeling, and France put its 
hand to its sword — but did not draw it. Its Levant fleet, which the English 
themselves acknowledged could crush the British squadron there, returned 
to Toulon, and the bombardment of Beyrut and the fall of Egyptian power 
in Syria were an affront to France and a check to its policy. Declining 
to accept war under the disadvantageous conditions on which it was offered, 
the government at least wished to give France an attitude of dignity and 
firmness. It ordered the building of fortifications around Paris to be 
begun, armed the fortified places already in existence, increased the army, 
and, since the other powers isolated themselves from France, it wished 
France to accept that isolation which, it flattered itself, gave back to it 
freedom of its movements and facility for choosing its alliances, with 
kings or with peoples, in its own good time and as it saw fit. But that 
situation had its perils. The king became frightened at it. He aban- 
doned his ministry, which he had at first followed; Thiers gave way to 
Guizot (October 29, 1840), and the new head of the cabinet hastened to 
extend his hand to the powers, from which France had just received a 
rebuff. On July 13, 1841, he signed the treaty of the Straits, a double 
success for Palmerston, who could point to France humbly coming back 
into **the European concert" and Russia compelled to abandon the secret 
clause of the Unkiar-Skelessi agreement, since the new treaty closed the 
Turkish straits against all war vessels. The third act of the drama being 
played around Constantinople closed, then, to England's advantage. To 
take out its imaginary spite France would have to wait for the fourth, 
before Sebastopol. But as for the last, in which the catastrophe would 
take place, its misfortunes would, no doubt, have prepared for it other 
interests and a different policy. 

Second Eastern Question— Russia in Asia. — In the eighteenth 
century the English, as we have seen, had occupied India, and the Rus- 
sians Siberia at an earlier date. Between them there was, on one side, 
the whole stretch of China, and on the other all that of Turkestan, Afghan- 
istan and Persia. The two peoples did not dream, then, that their fron- 
tiers might one day touch and their armies fight there. But they spent 
half a century in approaching each other; and as to-day they are face to 
face, to-morrow they may be at each other's throats. Let us glance here 
for a few moments at this double advance of conquerors who will no doubt 
one day clash in a terrible shock. 

The king of Georgia, on the southern slope of the Caucasus, having 
implored (1796) and obtained aid from Catharine II against the Persians, 



538 Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 

the Russians, so as the better to protect him, seized Derbent on the Cas- 
pian, Daghestan, and nearly the whole country as far as the Kur; then 
they made themselves guardians of his kingdom, which they soon made 
a province (1801). Later on they took from the Turks the mouth of the 
Phasus (1809), and from the Persians Shirwan (18 13) and Armenia beyond 
the Kur as far as its affluent the Aras and Mount Ararat (1828). If, 
then, the formidable barrier of the Caucasus had not yet been crossed, 
at least it had been turned; and this occupation of the trans-Caucasian 
isthmus gave the Russians an excellent base of operations against both 
Asiatic Turkey and Persia, as well as mastery over the Caspian and the 
Euxine. But the mountaineers remained; a line of fortified posts grad- 
ually inclosed them and drove them back into the wild gorges and barren 
heights. Yet Shamyl, their hero and their prophet, kept up the holy war 
for thirty-five years, and exhausted ten Russian armies. In 1859 ^^ '^^^ 
surrounded and captured, and with him fell the independence of those 
valiant tribes. Then to the south of the Caucasus the czar possessed 
eight vast provinces, backed up against the mountains occupied by his 
troops and flanked by two seas and strong fortresses. United under a 
great military government whose seat is at Tiflis, to the Russian empire 
these provinces are an advance post from which its armies can take to 
the right the road to Scutari overlooking Constantinople, and to the left 
that to Teheran, the capital of Persia. While the merchant marine of 
Odessa and Taganrog, protected by the fleet of the new military harbor 
of Sebastopol, v/as mastering the Black Sea, the Caspian was becoming 
a Russian lake, for the eighth article of the treaty of Turmantchai stipulated 
that the Russians could navigate freely in that sea and would alone have 
armed boats there. The steamboat stations could, then, even in Persian 
waters, be transformed into fortlets marking the route for future expedi- 
tions, either towards the southern bank not far from which stands the 
capital of Persia, or towards the eastern bank, from which Khiva and 
Turkestan could be menaced. At the same time the Russians were 
approaching these countries through the immense steppe of the Kirghis 
Cossacks, Lake Aral, where they also had a war flotilla, and the many 
fortresses with which they staged the desert so as one day to reach the 
fertile regions of ancient Bactriana. 

England and Russia in Indirect Conflict. — ^While Europe was 
engaged, against republican or imperial France, in wars subsidized by 
England, this power was completing the work of acquiring two hundred 
millions of subjects in the Indies. In 18 16 Nepaul, north of Hindustan, 
and tvs^o years later the valiant Mahrattas, were obliged to accept sub- 



Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 539 

sidiary rule, each prince receiving at his court an officer of the Company 
or Resident who watched him, and near his capital, to keep it in obedience, 
an Enghsh garrison whose pay was guaranteed by the revenues of a dis- 
trict of his State. The Enghsh had thus acquired a numerous army 
which, without costing them anything, mastered the Dekkan and the 
Ganges valley. In 1824-6 they penetrated into India beyond the Ganges, 
took two hundred leagues of coasts from the Burmans, made the kingdom 
of Assam tributary, and seized Singapore and Malacca, a step which, 
making the Bay of Bengal an English sea, enabled them to command the 
great commercial route of Indo-China. On that side they thought only 
of the interests of their trade; in the northeast they had to guarantee 
their safety. 

Since the treaty of Turmantchai (1828) Russian influence predomi- 
nated at Teheran. When the populace of that city, irritated at the hard 
conditions of the peace, murdered the Muscovite ambassador, his family 
and every member of his household, the kings hastened to send his grand- 
son as the bearer of humble apologies to St. Petersburg. The czar forgave; 
but the founder of the Khadjar dynasty, Feth Ali, who had struggled 
bravely since 1797 against his formidable neighbor, had to acknowledge 
that the glorious days of Nadir Shah, when the Osmanlis, the Russians 
and the Mongols receded from before the Persian armies, had passed 
and probably would not return. Nadir Shah or Thamas KouH Khan, 
who died in 1747, was the last of the great Asiatic conquerors. He had 
recovered from the Russians Derbent and Ghilan, subdued Georgia, 
taken a large part ot Armenia from the Turks, conquered Khiva and 
Kharism, Bokhara and Cabul, crossed the Indus, and, after the capture 
of Delhi, compelled the Grand Mogul to pay him tribute. 

Importance of Herat and Cabul. — Two great cities command 
communications between Persia and India, namely, Herat and Cabul. 
General Bonaparte was about to take the road to them when the resistance 
of Acre stopped him. After Tilsitt Napoleon proposed to the czar Alex- 
ander to act in concert with him in that great undertaking, and until 1812 
one of his secret agents traversed Mesopotamia and Persia to prepare the 
way. Nicholas inherited this plan and at first assigned the chief party 
in it to the shah who had become his vassal. Herat was in possession 
of an Afghan prince, whom he urged the Teheran court to attack. A 
first attempt failed (1833); a second (1837) had the same result; in the 
following year a third was made, for which the czar sent to the king, officers 
to conduct the siege operations. England followed all these movements 
with an attentive eye. It was known that Russian spies were traversing 



540 Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 

India; Greek and Armenian merchants, settled in Calcutta and Bombay, 
were suspected of giving information to the St. Petersburg court con- 
cerning the army, the finances and all the affairs of the Company. The 
natives themselves v^^ere wrought up by rumors set afloat about the decline 
of English power and the greatness of the Muscovite empire. A few 
years later a governor general wrote to the queen's ministers that they 
could not imagine what idea the peoples of India formed of Russia's power. 
At last the emperor Nicholas no longer concealed his intention of some 
day striking down the British flag in India. On the eve of the Crimean 
war one of his official organs declared that if it was intended to set up 
an obstacle against him in Europe, he would go and dictate peace at Cal- 
cutta. Herat was, then, one of the stages of the Russian arm.y towards 
the Ganges valley, and consequently it was also an advanced post of the 
Company. The two rivals met under its walls. Before the Persian troops 
appeared within sight of Herat, Englishmen had entered it to conduct 
its defence, and a squadron ascending the Persian Gulf made a threaten- 
ing demonstration, against Persia's southern provmces. The shah was 
obliged to withdraw his troops (1838). This was a check for the czar. 
The following year he tried to indemnify himself by an expedition against 
Khiva led by his own generals. Khiva is on the second route to India 
through the Amu Daria and Bokhara. But terror-striking deserts sep- 
arate that city from the Caspian; almost the whole Russian army corps 
perished there. Another expedition was sent out in 1853 and the Russians 
entered Khiva, which they left only after imposing on the khan a treaty 
which he did not observe. They returned in 1873, probably not to leave 
it again. The Persians also made a second attack on Herat, which they 
took by surprise in 1856. England declared war against them, seized 
the seaport of Bender-Bushire and the island of Karrack in the Persian 
Gulf, and imposed on them a treaty (1857) by which they pledged them- 
selves never again to try to seize Herat. 

England^s First Afghan War and Later Conquests. — Before 
the Russo-Persian failure of 1838 the English had decided to forestall 
the Russians, or at least to occupy, beyond the Indus, the chain of lofty 
mountains in Afghanistan, which in their possession would furnish an 
impregnable barrier for their Indian empire. Early in 1839 the Bengal 
army crossed the river and the Bolan passes, seized Kandahar, the fortress 
of Ghizni,and Cabul, where it restored as king Shah Sudjah, who had 
been driven out thirty years before. The valiant tribes of that country, 
astonished for a moment, soon regained courage and, when the governor 
general wished to diminish the subsidies at first furnished to the chiefs. 



i 



Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 541 

a general insurrection broke out. Fifteen thousand Englishmen, sur- 
rounded on all sides, perished — only one man recrossed the Indus (1842). 
The Company could not remain under the imputation of such a disaster. 
A fresh army entered the country, which it devastated frightfully, but 
soon concluded to leave it, for the catastrophe of Kurd Cabul was a warning 
to the English not to extend beyond their peninsula, but rather to strengthen 
themselves in it by leaving there no independent State that could i^erve 
as a basis for a revolt or an invasion. In 1843, by the subm.ission of the 
emirs of Scinde and Beluchistan, they made themselves m.asters cf the 
mouths of the Indus, and on the upper part of the river they established 
subsidiary rule, the presage of an early annexation, in the Punjaub (Five 
Rivers), a vast region inhabited by the warlike Sikhs. Six years later 
the Punjaub was united with the Company's other domains. The famous 
valley of Cashmere foUow^ed the lot of the kingdom of Lahore, of which 
it was a dependency. It was also one of the gates of India, for not far 
from there, on the right bank of the Scinde, arose the Bolor chain, from 
which descends the Amu Daria, which falls into the Russian waters of 
the Aral, and that gate the English wished to close. Before 1848, then, 
they had a very strong hold on the course of the Indus; they strove to bring 
under their influence Afghanistan, which they had not been able to 
bring under their rule; and they came close to the Pamir plateau, the ancient 
cracle of the European races and the point from which the chief chains 
of Asia diverge. This plateau, the western prolongation of the Him- 
alayas, rises sixteen thousand feet, and measures nearly two hundred 
miles from north to south by ninety from east to west. It gives rise to 
rivers that form the Amu Daria or Oxus to the northwest and swell the 
Indus to the south. It has been called "the roof of the world." Some 
believe that remains of the ancient Aryas have been found in its valleys. 

Third Eastern Question — the Pacific Ocean. — The Pacific Ocean, 
formerly a vast expanse of watery waste, is now frequented by the shipping 
of every nation in the world, because on its shores live industrious old 
nations that, until little m.ore than half a century ago, with jealous care 
closed their doors against the foreigner, and young colonies of the peoples 
of Europe or America that have rapidly become flourishing. Northwest 
of it are four hundred million Chinese, producers and buyers, and over 
forty million Japanese, intelligent and active; to the southwest the British 
colonies of New Zealand and Australia, to which the first convict was 
carried in 1788, and which now, with a white population of four millions, 
does an annual export business of three hundred million dollars; in the 
centre the spice islands; not far from them French Indo-China, which 



542 Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 

has grown to vast proportions since France planted its flag there (i860), 
and is admirably situated both for commercial and military purposes; 
farther west Hindustan's three hundred million human beings, to whom 
civilization gives needs while it asks products of them; and southeast of 
China the Philippine Islands, a rich possession of the United States since 
1898, with a population of almost eight millions. On the Pacific's eastern 
shore are the Spanish-American republics and three States of the Union, 
the capital of one of which, now rising from the ruins of earthquake and 
conflagration, must ever remain a great and growing commercial centre 
on the site of a village of less than two hundred inhabitants sixty years 
ago. Communication between our Pacific coast and that of Asia and 
Australasia is frequent and rapid. The Pacific Ocean, then, on which 
the greatest markets of the world open, has in recent years acquired the 
commercial importance which the Mediterranean enjoyed in ancient 
times, and the Middle Ages and the Atlantic at a later date. This is an 
economic revolution almost as great as that which followed Columbus's 
discovery, and more rapid, for it took place in a few years. 

Isolation of China and Japan. — These former "dead seas of man," 
the beginnings of whose history are lost in fable, have but lately come 
into permanent contact with western civilization. Had the Mongol 
conquest of China in the thirteenth century proved permanent, that great 
country would have had a far different destiny from the stagnation in 
which its civilization has stood so long. But his successors were not 
worthy of him and were driven out before the end of the fourteenth century. 
Then native dynasties ruled in the old way until the Manchus came in 
the middle of the seventeenth. It was a change of rulers only, not of 
conditions. Europeans had long been knocking at China's doors. Catholic 
missionaries to evangelize it (after 1581), the Portuguese (still earlier), 
the Dutch, following them to drive them out, and then England and 
France, to carry on trade with its peoples. The Jesuits secured a high 
standing at Pekin by reason of their learning, and a Russian mission 
secured a footing there by hiding its real intent behind the cloak of religion; 
but the merchants obtained only the privilege of opening agencies outside 
the walls of Canton, such as the one Russia had at Kiakhta, where the 
furs of Siberia were exchanged for China's silk and tea. In vain did 
England (i 793-1806) and Russia (1805) send solemn embassies. As a 
condition of receiving them, the Son of Heaven demanded that the ambas- 
sadors submit to a humiliating ceremonial; some refused to do so, others 
reached Pekin only as captives, and all returned without the commercial 
treaty which they had been sent to obtain. Lord Macartney, an eye- 



Europe and the Eastern Question after 1830 543 

witness of the treatment of the most successful of these embassies, says 
they entered the capital as mendicants, sojourned there as captives, and 
left it as criminals. That condition became even more serious when, 
in 1828, the Catholic missionaries were driven out in spite of the toleration 
professed by the government in regard to other religions, and China 
remained intrenched behind its wall. Japan, still more hermetically 
sealed since the extirpation of Christianity (about 1640), tolerated the 
presence of the Dutch at Nagasaki only on condition that they would 
confine themselves to a small island in the roadstead, and refused to let 
other people approach its coasts. 

The Opium War — France and China. — All the peoples of the 
world, whether barbarian or civilized, have created factitious needs for 
^themselves; some chew betel, others smoke tobacco, and the Chinese 
get drunk on opium, in spite of this poison's disastrous effects on the human 
organism. The English turned this vice to money-making; they covered 
Bengal with poppy fields, and, as the Chinese government strictly pro- 
hibited this traffic, they organized a vast smuggling trade. The Middle 
Kingdom continued to be flooded with the fatal drug, and the English 
made sixty millions a year on it. In 1839 the imperial commissioner 
seized and cast into the sea twenty-two thousand cases of opium belonging 
to British subjects. There was no ground for protest against this legal 
seizure, but it had given occasion to some acts of violence upon Englishmen. 
This pretext was seized upon, and an expedition, sent into Chinese waters, 
occupied the island of Chusan and destroyed the Bogue forts commanding 
the entrance to the Canton river. A first agreement not having been 
ratified, the English after two campaigns went and dictated peace under 
the walls of Nanking. By this treaty (August, 1842) China opened five 
ports to foreign trade, ceded Hongkong to England and promised it a 
very large indemnity. In their official declarations the two governments 
continued to regard the opium trade as unlawful; smuggling however, 
facilitated by the opening of the five ports, introduced forty thousand 
cases of the drug in the following year, bringing a profit of a hundred 
millions to the Bengal cultivators. 

France tried to have its share in the honest commerce of those regions. 
In 1844 it sent to China an embassy that signed a commercial treaty and 
obtained the withdrawal of the edicts against the Christians, restitution 
of the confiscated churches, and liberty for the missionaries to spread 
the Gospel wherever they pleased. But these steps did not end the Chinese 
troubles, as will be seen later. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 



The Great Upheaval of 1848 



A Brief Respite of Peace and Progress. — The Straits treaty marks 
the beginning of a breathing spell for Europe. For several years very few- 
disturbances and no insurrections were witnessed. The powers spoke of 
peace, and order reigned in nearly all the States. In England the Tories ■ 
returned to power (1841); Prince Metternich continued to govern Austria 
"paternally," and the czar Nicholas busied himself with organizing Russia 
as an immense barracks from which would emerge against Europe or Asia 
armies which he thought formidable. Narvaez gave Spain a new con- 
stitution more monarchical than the one it had received in 1837; and 
France, where since 1830 a new cabinet had been seen almost every year, 
now Hved without ministerial change. Guizot, prime minister or president 
of the council from 1840 to 1848, organized a conservative party which, 
finding everything for the best in a social order in which it held power and 
honors, thought there was nothing to be changed. There came, therefore, 
a momentary lull. The political agitations of the preceding ten years were 
succeeded by the fruitful toil of industry and commerce; from one end of 
Europe to the other there were heard only the sound of railroads being 
built and the hum of factories that arose and worked with feverish ardor; 
institutions of credit and fiduciary values were multiplied, circulation was 
becoming more active in the social body, and consequently life more strenu- 
ous, and the Stock Exchange made itself its regulator, as the heart regulates 
the whole circulation in the human organism. But that society, calmed 
while developing its wealth, would soon find itself on the brink of an abyss 
through the fault of those who, while it was their duty to w^atch over it, 
in their turn believed the world to be stationary and forgot to inquire 
whether there were not some new needs to be satisfied. Beside and below 
the official society, satisfied with the tranquility reigning in the street and 
the activity shown in business matters, a propaganda work was continued 
in favor of two ideas already old, namely, independence of the nations and 
liberty of the peoples, and to the advantage of a new idea, that of bettering 
the lot of the laboring classes. In Poland and in Italy the Russian and the 

544 



The Great Upheaval of 1848 545 

Austrian were ever odious. In Bohemia and Hungary the new study of 
national history and literature was reviving memories of autonomy that it 
was thought had long been dead. Germany was dreaming of its unity, of 
the Vaterland; and so as to make themselves popular, some of its princes 
spoke out on the subject. To this idea the king of Bavaria erected a temple, 
the Walhalla or Pantheon of all the German glories; and at Berlin the head 
of the house of Hohenzollern was heard celebrating the German Father- 
land. After the Nationals came the Liberals, some of whom asked for 
liberties foreshadowed or promised, others the extension of liberties already 
obtained. The Romagnese demanded from the Papal government, 
occasionally with threats as in 1843, ^ regular administration with a body 
of laws. Every year the Rhenish provinces expressed the wish for a con- 
stitution, and even in the Prussian lands on the Vistula and the Oder there 
were manifestations of Liberal tendencies that caused uneasiness at Berlin. 
Turin printed a newspaper whose mere title was significant — ILRisor- 
gimento; and Count Balbo pubhshed his Speranze d'ltalia (1843). Later 
on we shall see what the French government was asked to do. 

Progress of Socialistic Ideas. — But in the shade a more formidable 
party was being organized, a party- which within twenty-three years was to 
deluge the streets of Paris twice with blood, sacrifice illustrious victims, 
reduce palaces to ashes, and long thereafter remain the terror of Europe un- 
less its demands are met with wisdom and energy. The Revolution of 1789, 
brought about by and for the middle classes, seemed to be realized wherever 
privileges of birth and the arbitrary will of kings had disappeared. That 
two-fold conquest, equality before the law and free discussion of the coun- 
try's interests, sufficed for the ambition of the middle class, in which every 
man, accustomed to being the artisan of his own fortune, asked the State 
only to guarantee public order without interfering in private affairs. The 
same feeling did not exist in the laboring classes. The society of the 
nineteenth century was ever more and more assuming the industrial charac- 
ter. The application of steam to work previously done by hand, and the 
invention of machine tools brought about a revolution in manufacturing 
methods and in the very constitution of labor. Small workshops made way 
for immense factories to which the railroads brought multitudes of the 
rural population. In a few years the capitals and the manufacturing or 
commercial cities, on both sides of the Atlantic, doubled their populations; 
and in those formidable agglomerations industry, over stimulated by the 
powerful means placed at its disposal, made many men very wealthy, but 
a far larger number wretchedly poor. To meet competition it was neces- 
sary to produce much and at a low price, that is, to ask the workman for a 
35 



546 The Great Upheaval of 1848 

longer day and lower wages, out of which he could make no provision 
against sickness and idleness. Whence arose sufferings which Utopians 
proposed to suppress by making the proletariate disappear as the two great 
evils of the past, domestic slavery and serfdom of the glebe, had disappeared. 
But instead of adopting successive betterments, they undertook to change 
everything at once, which would have caused a thousand ills in trying to 
heal one, and failing even on that one, because their remedies went against 
the very nature of man and society. A convent may get along with com- 
munity of property, a barbarous tribe with promiscuous sexual relations, 
a religious or charitable association with the sole motive of the devotedness 
of each to the good of all; but a regular society is not formed in such con- 
ditions, and it was not in vain that the ignorant populace heard such formulas 
as these: "Property is robbery," "every man has a right to work," even 
when there is neither work to be done nor money to pay for it, "wages 
should be equal," in spite of the inequality of the work produced, "the 
individual should disappear in a past copartnership in which each would 
receive in accordance with his needs and give according so his ability. " 

Development and Diffusion of Socialism. — These socialistic 
dreams, in complete opposition to the most imperative need of our time, 
that of Hberty for the individual, v/ere unfortunately to become political 
reahties, by the alliance of certain republicans with the new sectaries. The 
latter, so as to give Hfe to their dreams, needed to make the State interfere 
in everything. Now, the government being in the hands of the middle 
class, the first thing to be done was to take it away from that element of 
society. The multitude takes but little concern about political questions 
which it does not understand; but after listening most attentively to those 
who promised comfort, it followed them when they said that it would attain 
"social liquidation" only with a government of its own choice. It was thus 
that socialism, coming into existence under the Restoration, amid humanitar- 
ian Utopias that were apparently rather inoffensive, was becoming a party 
that had numbers behind it, since it comprised all the poor, to whom the 
logicians of 1848 gave strength by decreeing universal suffrage. This 
movement was not peculiar to France. Since 18 17 England had had the 
the Chartists, in 1836 the Workingmen's Association, and three years later 
serious troubles in Wales and elsewhere. In 1844 a central association for 
the welfare of toilers was formed in Prussia, and serious troubles disturbed 
Silesia and Bohemia. This was the beginning of that war between wages 
and capital, between workingmen and employer, which would soon break 
out so violently. Of that underground movement official society, as so 
often happens, saw nothing, or took little concern about an evil inflictmg 



The Great Upheaval of 1848 547 

sufferings on classes accustomed to suffer for so many centuries — on the 
eve of February 24 it was entertaining far other ideas, and a few months 
afterwards it became necessary to fight a four days' battle against a hun- 
dred thousand toilers. 

Free Trade and Income Tax in England. — ^While Guizot was 
refusing every concession to the people of France, England was surely, 
if slowly, advancing towards the full realization of free institutions. The 
Chartist movement had failed, though its demands were more moderate 
than those of the laboring classes on the continent. Of the five reforms 
it had advocated, all of which were then refused, four have since become 
laws of the land, and the fifth, annual Parliaments, is not now asked by 
anybody. The Tory leader, Sir Robert Peel, had kept himself in office 
(1841-6) only by becoming more of a reformer than the Whigs. Robbing 
his adversaries of their own weapons, the ideas of Huskisson and of Can- 
ning, he abolished the import duties on cereals, though he had entered 
office pledged to maintain them, and thus removed the impediments in 
the way of importations. He also restored the income tax. By these 
two measures did he destroy what was regarded as the cornerstone of 
aristocratic power. He also repealed Cromwell's Navigation Act, which 
had founded his country's maritime supremacy, but which had now become 
an engine of war fit only to be relegated to the lumber pile of antiquated 
legislation. By the repeal of the Corn Laws he gave cheap food to the 
poor, and by the income tax made the rich support the government, as 
it did not affect those with small incomes. But he failed to forestall and 
provide in advance against the most appalling calamity that had ever 
befallen Ireland in time of peace, the great potato famine of 1846-8. He 
had timely warning, for its unmistakable symptoms had made their appear- 
ance in 1845. No proper steps were taken, and in the next five years the 
country lost three millions of its population, half the number by starva- 
tion and famine fever, and the other half by emigration "with a vengeance." 

It took the Parliamentary institutions of Great Britain a long time 
to react on the other governments, but it took only a brief space for Sir 
Robert Peel's economic revolution to extend its influence beyond its island 
home. Brought about in ihe name of the principles of free trade and 
applied to the greatest market in the world, it had necessarily a character 
of universal expansion. That great act, in such striking contrast with 
the petty concerns of the Guizot m.inistry, would, then, exert considerable 
influence on the customs legislations of the continent. But there is a 
drawback to everything; the triumph of liberty in the economic world 
would necessarily prepare the way for its victory in the political domain. 



548 The Great Upheaval of 1848 

England, with its antipathy to revolutions, but with a government that, 
like a skilful pilot, has its eye ever fixed on the horizon so as the better 
to guide the ship of State, had since 1822 escaped political hurricanes 
by following the guidance of public opinion^n 1822-6 Huskisson's 
reforms, in 1829 emancipation of the Catholics, in 1832 electoral reform, 
in 1 841 restoration of the income tax, not now as a war measure, but to 
cheapen the food of the poor, and in 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws and 
establishment of free trade. It was for this reason that it had no July 
or February revolutions. 

England Adopts a New Colonial System.— From an easily sup- 
pressed rebellion in Canada (1837) Great Britain learned a lesson which, 
over sixty years before, it had refused to take from its thirteen original 
colonies in America; but the Parliament and statesmen of 1840 were 
vastly different from George Ill's cringing political servants. England 
had abandoned the colonial system which modern Europe had inherited 
from ancient Rome, and which certain States continued to retain, namely, 
that of absolute domination by the mother country over its colonies, which, 
docile servants of and existing only for it, work, produce and buy for 
its profit. This system, as we have seen, had cost the English North Amer- 
ica; the Spaniards and Portuguese, South America; and the French, Canada 
and Louisiana. The new policy, to which England was, moreover, led 
by its own genius, and which, leaving to the mother country only the 
appointment of the governor, lets the colonies themselves manage their 
own affairs through a legislature which they elect, has developed the 
prosperity of the colonies and been more profitable to England. Lord 
Russell acknowledged in 1852 that the constitutional liberty granted to 
Canada had been productive of marvelous progress; and with that fruit- 
ful liberty all the English colonies were endowed in 1849, with the excep- 
tion of India and those that are only military stations, such as Gibraltar, 
Malta, etc. In 1852 also Lord Derby said in Parliament that the time 
had not come for granting popular institutions to India; but yet he was 
of the opinion that it would be necessary to educate the natives to taking 
a larger share in the administration of their internal affairs, even should 
they be led to wishing that political might be added to judiciary power, 
nay, even, should the immense British empire fall by its own hand, in the 
course of time, and give way to a native power. It would be worthy of 
a nation like his to undertake to free those peoples from the degradation 
and ignorance in which it had found them, and to make them capable 
of governing themselves. Fine words these, and worthy of a statesman; 
for not only is it true, as an old English poet says, that "freedom is a noble 



The Great Upheaval of 1848 549 

thing !" it is also useful. In ten years (1842-51) England had enormously 
reduced its debt and taxes; from 1832 to 1849 its trade almost doubled, — 
that with China increased threefold after the East India Company lost 
its monopoly, — and, while in the same period every continental State's 
budget showed a deficit, that of England had a very large surplus. 

Constitutional Rule Established in Prussia. — Since the time 
of Voltaire and Montesquieu the echoes sent out from the House of Com- 
mons v/ere heard beyond the Channel only by a very small number of 
superior men; but now, ov^ing to the newspapers, they were heard every- 
where, and awakened and aroused mien's minds. In 1845 the States 
of Silesia, the grand duchy of Posen and royal Prussia had demanded 
liberties — liberty of the press, publicity of debates, and a penal code in 
accordance v^ith the principles of French legislation. The king refused 
everything, and to those who asked him for a constitution he answered 
that never would he pern it a sheet of paper to be placed between his 
people and him. Two years later he was obliged to convene a general 
diet, to which, it is true, he meant to give but a consultive character. But 
as the diet claimed the right to receive the annual account of the admin- 
istration of the public debt and that of deliberating on all general laws, 
including the taxes, it at once arrogated to itself financial control along 
with legislative power; so as to guarantee itself against being taken unawares, 
it declared in advance that it would grant to no assembly or committee, 
even issuing from its own body, the power to take its place in the per- 
formance of its duties. This was the establishing of constitutional rule 
at Berlin, and there now remained in the world but two great States repre- 
senting extreme opposition to the new ideas, and these two were Russia 
and Austria. 

Liberal Agitations in Austria and Italy. — But the movement 
vv^as reaching even that inert Austria. In its oldest duchies, Styria and 
Carinthia, men wanted reforms; in Hungary, a strong constitutional party 
was already organized. Bohemia was also in agitation; but as the country 
was divided between two hostile elements of the population, Germians 
and Czechs, Prince Metternich could depend on one to resist the other; 
in 1847 he withdrew the right to vote the taxes from the States of Bohemia. 
His po'icy had just received a striking rebuff on the western frontier of 
the empire by the speedy defeat of the Sonderbund, which he had wished 
to save. The victory of the Sv,-iss Liberals was but one more bad example 
given to the docile subjects of the Hapsburgs; it did not constitute a danger. 
But on the other side of the Alps a storm was rumbling, so much the more 
menacino: as it now came from Rome. 



550 The Great Upheaval of 1848 

The unfortunate attempt of the Bandiera brothers, sons of an Aus- 
trian admiral, to stir up the Calabrias (1844) and an insurrection at Rimini 
(1845), undertaken to obtain the appHcation of the 1831 Memorandum 
of the great powers, had been the last recourses to arms by the Italians. 
But what the gunshot propaganda did not succeed in doing, that by ideas 
accompHshed with that intelligent people. With a book published in 
1843 Gioberti had won over a part of the clergy to the national cause, 
and a famous preacher. Father Ventura, exclaimed: "If the Church does 
not advance with the age, the people will not stop, but will advance without 
the Church, outside the Church, against the Church." Would a Pope 
be capable of understanding that it was necessary to reconcile religion 
with liberty } That Pope, a reformer for the universal Church and a national 
prince for Italy, the Italians imagined they had found in Pius IX, elected 
in June, 1846. At the very beginning of his reign he dismissed his Swiss 
guard, opened the prisons, recalled the exiles, subjected the clergy to taxa- 
tion, and prepared the way for the reform of both civil and criminal law. 
He instituted an assembly of notables, chosen by him and having only 
a consultive vote; he created a council of State, gave municipal institutions 
to Rome, and for the first time published the budget of the States of the 
Church. The king of Sardinia and the grand duke of Tuscany followed 
this example; and Italy entertained the twofold hope of recovering its 
political liberty and its national independence. On December 5, 1846, 
fires lit up the night from one end of the Apennines to the other; men 
were celebrating to the old cry of "Out with the barbarians!" the cen- 
tennial anniversary of a defeat of the Austrians at Genoa. England, 
ruled since June, 1846, by the Whig ministry of Lord John Russell, sent 
the Mediterranean fleet to the Sicilian waters; and Lord Minto, its ambas- 
sador, traversed Italy urging the princes to constitutional ways. From 
the French Chamber of Deputies the opposition also called to the Pope: 
"Courage, Holy Father, courage 1" But the Tuileries cabinet, while favor- 
able to administrative, advised against political, reforms, so as to placate 
Austria, whose alliance, since the Spanish marriages, seemed necessary 
to it. 

Austria Fails to Grasp its Opportunity. — By rallying to the Liberal 
movement, Austria could have restrained and directed it, but that power 
was still under the baneful influence of the party that accused the "Car- 
bonaro Mastai" of having usurped the Holy See by intrigue and that 
dared indeed to call him "a Robespierre in tiara." It sent to the Pope 
a severe note against his reforms (June, 1847), fomented a conspiracy 
even in Rome, and, in violation of the treaties, occupied the city of Ferrara 



The Great Upheaval of 1848 551 

(August). Cardinal Ferretti sent to Vienna an energetic protest supported 
by the courts of Turin and Florence, but censured by Guizot. "Father 
Ventura," said Pius IX, discouraged, "France is abandoning us, and 
we are alone!" "No," the Theatine answered, "God remains with us, 
let us go ahead." And Italy went ahead. At the end of November the 
Roman Consulta was opened. Leopold II and Charles Albert intro- 
duced reforms that were equivalent to the promise of a constitution, and 
their ministers signed with those of the Pope an alliance "for the devel- 
opment of Italian industry and the well being of the populations" (Novem- 
ber 3). The duke of Modena and the king of the Two Sicilies were invited 
to join in the treaty. As this union was a menace to Austria, that power 
answered it with the military occupation of Parma and Modena (Decem- 
ber). At once the extremities of Italy were aflame. Three months earlier 
insurrections at Reggio and Messina and a movement at Naples had 
been severely suppressed and reforms promised. On January 12, 1848, 
as these were not forthcoming, Palermo rose in arms to the cry of "Viva 
Pio Nono !" and on the i6th the insurrection had gained the whole island, 
on the 1 8th, ten thousand men marched on Naples, demanding a consti- 
tution, as in 1821; on the 28th, Ferdinand II yielded, and on February il 
a charter modeled on the French one of 1830 was published at Naples; 
four days later, at Florence; and on March 4, at Turin. The Italian 
populations were in great excitement, especially in Lombardo-Venetia, 
where exasperation against the Tedesco (German) had seized even the 
women and children. On January 3, the Austrian dragoons had sabred 
the groups in the streets of Milan, troubles broke out at Pavia and Padua 
on February 8; on the 15th, at Bergamo, and on the 22d Marshal Radetski 
proclaimed martial law at Milan, saying to his soldiers: "Against your 
courage the guilty efi^orts of fanaticism and rebellion will be broken like 
glass against the rock." Almost at the same moment there was being 
accomplished at Paris a revolution which, seventeen days later, had its 
echo at Vienna, from which Prince Metternich was driven, and on March 
30, there was left to Austria in Italy only the fortresses of the Quadrilateral. 

Why Louis Philippe's Throne Tottered. — When we glance at the 
general condition of Europe at the beginning of the year 1848, we see that 
the critical moment had come. After a struggle that had lasted more 
than a generation between the old regime and the Liberal ideas, the latter 
felt robust enough to be confident of their early triumph. But would 
that victory be won peacefully by intelligent and patriotic harmony between 
governments and governed, or rather would blind resistance stir up use- 
less disturbances, nay, even war, that would open the way to republican 



552 The Great Upheaval of 1848 

adventures and socialistic acts of violence ? That depended on France. 
If it inclined to the side to vi^hich all civilized Europe v^^as going, free insti- 
tutions would be established peacefully. Before France and England 
united in one and the same thought and, if need be, in one and the same 
action, Prussia and Austria, weakened by internal agitations, were reced- 
ing, and the old system, like a body still standing, but left lifeless for a 
long time past, was falling not to rise again. That was the fortune which 
France had within its grasp, but which it let slip. 

During the reign of Louis Philippe the conquest of Algeria had been 
completed, or almost so, and some small possessions in other parts of 
the world had been acquired. At home commerce and industry had 
been favored, and the first great railroads had been built (1842). But 
the government worked only in the interest of what was called the legal 
country, that is, the two hundred thousand men of the middle class, who 
alone were entitled to vote for members of the Chamber of Deputies. 
All favors and places were theirs; accordingly they supported the July 
government with all their might. The Chamber was so much the more 
devoted to the government as it contained many office-holders, who 
depended absolutely on it, and occasionally formed over a third of its mem- 
bership. Certain politicians who were upholders of the monarchy, such 
as Thiers and Odilon Barrot, asked that the franchise be slightly extended 
and that office-holders be excluded from the Chamber. Others, radi- 
cals like Ledru-Rollin, a great popular orator and a deputy since 1841, 
demanded universal suffrage. But Louis Philippe would make no con- 
cession. Irritation against him became so pronounced that in 1847, 
advantage was taken of a failure of the crops, and of the consequent 
intense sufferings of the poor, to magnify to his disadvantage scandals 
showing that several members of the government were corrupt. Then 
popular banquets were given in many cities for the sole purpose of afford- 
ing an opportunity for the delivering of speeches in favor of reform. At 
one of these, held at Macon (July 18, 1847), Lamartine announced "the 
revolution of the public conscience and the revolution of contempt." A 
few months later the speech from the throne at the opening of Parliament 
(December 27) contained this sentence, which provoked violent protests: 
"Amid the agitation fomented by hostile or blind passions, one convic- 
tion animates and upholds me, and it is that we have in the constitutional 
monarchy, in the union of the great powers of the State, the assured means 
of surmounting all obstacles." 

Louis Philippe*s Throne Totters and Falls. — Guizot, on the point 
of ending his career, had taken this means of making a last act of faith. 




I 



The Great Upheaval of 1848 553 

He converted no one, and attacks came in rapid succession, ever growing 
more violent, in the Chamber. The ministry did not recede. " If anyone," 
one of its members, Duchatel, exclaimed, "believes the government will 
yield to these manifestations, he is in error, it will not." "Reform," 
said the king, "is the beginning of revolution. As soon as the opposition 
takes hold of the reins of government, I will quit." On February 22, 
1848, in consequence of the prohibition of a reform banquet in Paris, 
disturbance broke out. At the same time Odilon Barrot laid before 
the Chamber a formal indictment of the ministry, guilty, he said, of having 
violated the principles of the constitution and betrayed the honor of France. 
Next day the equivocal attitude of the National Guard led the king to 
yield and accept Guizot's resignation. This sudden change was very 
inopportune, for it disorganized resistance. That very evening the sol- 
diers guarding the ministry of foreign affairs having answered a pistol 
shot fired at them from the crowd with a general volley, about a score 
were killed, and their bodies were paraded through the streets in the glare 
of torches. Insurrection had broken out in earnest. Louis Philippe 
lost his head, called Thiers and Odilon Barrot to office, and amid all that 
disorder, left Marshal Bugeaud without orders and unable to prevent 
contact of the multitude with the troops. Abandoned by the National 
Guard and threatened even in the Tuileries, the king abdicated in favor 
of his grandson, the count of Paris, and fled to England, where he died 
in 1850. The duchess of Orleans tried to get the Chamber of Deputies 
to recognize her as regent. But that body was dispersed by the mob, 
which tumultously chose a provisional government consisting of Dupont 
de r Eure, Lamartine, Arago, Ledru-Rollin, Marie, Cremieux and Garnier- 
Pag's. These men went at once to the City Hall and proclaimed the 
Republic (February 24). Thus, through the government's incapacity 
and the boldness of a faction, France had, instead of a necessary reform 
regularly carried not by the public powers, a new insurrection that would 
stop work, destroy hundreds of millions' worth of property, shed torrents 
of blood, and turn the country from the path of peaceful progress. 

The Second French Republic. — For the reasons we have briefly 
stated, the July government had melted away with strange ease. Nowhere 
did the new republic encounter the slightest opposition. So as to win 
the confidence of the middle classes, the provisional government hastened 
to abolish the death penalty for political offences, and to please the popu- 
lace proclaimed universal suffrage, opened the National Guard to all 
citizens, and abolished slavery in the colonies; while to please newspaper 
men and the people of the cities, it suppressed the stamp tax, the salt tax, 



554 The Great Upheaval of 1848 

and a part of 'the Paris customs dues; but, to make up the deficit thus 
created, it increased the tax on realty forty-five per cent, which greatly 
dissatisfied the rural population. At the same time it removed all 
restrictions on the liberty of the press and of assembly. The majority 
of the men who had come into power were moderates, and the state of 
mind of the country taken as a whole was by no means revolutionary. 
But a large part of those who had taken an active part in overthrowing 
the monarchy were socialistic workingmen who thought the realization 
of their dreams was at hand. Their spokesman, Louis Blanc, wrested 
from the government (February 25) a pledge to guarantee the working- 
man's existence by toil, and "national workshops" were created. These 
shops, in which the men received two francs a day when they worked 
and one franc when idle, which was most frequently the case, soon had 
numerous recruits — one hundred thousand in Paris before the end of 
May. The institution was extended to various provincial cities. But 
in spite Df this, the government did not mean to pursue a revolutionary 
policy. 

A general election for members of a national Constituent Assembly 
was held on April 23. Of the nine hundred deputies chosen, eight hun- 
dred were or said they were republicans, most of them moderates. When, 
early in the following month, the Assembly met, it thanked the provisional 
government and chose to take its place an executive committee consisting 
of Lamartine, Arago, Gamier-Pages, Marie and Ledru-Rollin. As the 
composition of the new Parliament gave no hope to the radical party, 
the latter tried to overthrow it by violence, but was defeated by armed 
force (May 15). It was becoming urgent to dissolve the national work- 
shops, which, in addition to their economical and financial drawbacks, 
were becoming permanent centres of agitation. A measure to this effect 
was adopted on June 21. Two days later an insurrection broke out 
in the east end of Paris. The executive committee resigned, and General 
Cavaignac was appointed dictator. For four days bloody battles were 
fought in the streets. On the 24th the mob was almost at the City Hall. 
On the 25th General Brea and Archbishop AfFre were killed while trying 
to address the insurgents. Next day the mob demonstrations were sup- 
pressed, after seven generals had perished. Eleven thousand insurgents 
were arrested, and three thousand of them were sentenced to transpor- 
tation. 

Louis Napoleon Becomes President of France. — "We are ruined 
if vanquished, and also ruined if victorious," a republican had said on 
the outbreak of the insurrection. The June days, in fact, stimulated 



The Great Upheaval of 1848 555 

everywhere the reaction which the unpopular realty tax had begun. 
Cavaignac was continued as head of the executive power. The violence 
of the press had to be curbed by repressive measures. Then the Assembly 
elaborated a constitution which organized power in the following manner: 
A Chamber of seven hundred and fifty members chosen for three years 
and voting the laws, and a president elected for four years, who was to 
see to the laws being carried out. The crucial question was as to how 
the president should be chosen. Grevy proposed in vain that he be designa- 
ted by the Assembly, while Lamartine, perhaps from personal concern, 
earnestly insisted on the choice being left to the people, and his view pre- 
vailed by a large majority. The election was to take place on December 
10. Louis Napoleon, son of King Louis of Holland, presented himself. 
Having returned to France on February 25, by order of the government 
he had kept in the background for a little while, but, elected in four depart- 
ments, he was soon again in evidence. In spite of his earlier efforts, 
he was little known. The leaders of the conservative party attached 
little importance to him. "He is a small man behind a big name," Thiers 
said. At first they did not consider that that name was a great power 
in itself, and then that he who bore it had the fixed idea, which is a great 
power also, of deriving from it all possible advantages. Moreover, Cav- 
aignac had refused to take certain pledges, especially in regard to foreign 
policy. Napoleon's name, indeed, was enough. On December 10, the 
prince obtained five and a half million votes, while Cavaignac had only 
a million and a half, Ledru-Rollin less than four hundred thousand, and 
Lamartine only a few thousand. The new president entrusted Odilon- 
Barrot with the forming of a ministry and at once started a movement 
having as its object the dissolution of the Constituent. Mention was 
even made already of a resort to force. Moreover, there were discussions 
between the two powers concerning the expedition to Rome, of which 
the Constituents disapproved. They separated on May 26; their suc- 
cessors of the Legislative Assembly had already been chosen (May 11). 

Revolution in Austria. — Meanwhile the old order had changed 
at last in the dominions of the Hapsburgs. The starting point was the 
fall of the now aged chancellor. Prince Metternich, who, as he himself 
said later on, had often governed Europe, but Austria never. Those 
who had undertaken the work in his name performed the task very awk- 
wardly. Their meddling and mean despotism had produced general 
discontent which, after having been manifested in many ways, at least, 
on March 13, 1848, developed into rioting. The students and the people 
made common cause. The weak emperor Ferdinand yielded, dismissed 



556 The Great Upheaval of 1848 

Metternlch, who went into exile at London, and granted all that was asked — 
civil guard, arming of the students, convening of a parliament and promise 
of a constitution But the document first presented (April 25) did not 
at all satisfy the Viennese agitators. To satisfy them it had to be modified 
and a constituent assembly was called to meet in July. Bohemia claimed 
rights for the Slav nationalities slighted by the centralizing Germans. 
The Czechs, who had already obtained from the emperor recognition 
of their historic rights and refused to take part in the Frankfort Parlia- 
ment, organized at Prague a great Slav congress (June 2), in which Poles 
and lugo-Slavs also took part. Hungarian envoys stirred up a rebellion, 
which Prince Windischgraetz suppressed with a bombardment. This 
easy victory reacted against the enemies of the Slavs. The Austrian 
government saw that it could depend on the army. The emperor, vvho 
had withdrawn for safety to Innsbruck, returned for the opening of Par- 
liament on July 22, and found a Slav majority there, at which the Viennese 
became indignant. When the deputies had obtained the abolition of 
the feudal claims, they soon lost interest in the imperial capital's agitation, 
and a fresh revolt broke out (October 6). The minister of war was seized, 
tortured, and hanged to a lamp-post. Next day the emperor issued a 
threatening manifesto and left for Olmutz. Windischgraetz laid siege to 
the capital, whose defence was conducted by the Polander Bem, and cap- 
tured it on October 30, while a Hungarian army coming to its relief had 
been defeated at Schvvrechat. Austria was now in the hands of a man 
of worth and energy. Prince Felix von Schwarzenberg, who severely pun- 
ished the Viennese rebels. The majority of the deputies had removed 
to Prague and there condemned the actions of those of their colleagues 
who had remained at Vienna. On November 15, they met at Kremsier 
(Kromerice) in Moravia, and there six days later received official notice 
that the aged emperor had abdicated in favor of his nephew, Francis Joseph. 
On March 4, 1829, Schwarzenberg granted a liberal, though centrahst, 
constitution, and the constituent assembly was prorogued. 

The Hungarian Rebellion. — These events were of mmor impor- 
tance compared with the great revolt which (1848-9) caime near separating 
Hungary from Austria. The Magyars (Hungarians proper) wished to 
play the same part in the eastern section as the Germans had tried in the 
rest of the realm, in the name of liberty to tyrannize over lugo-Slavs, Ru- 
manians and Germans of Transylvania. It was the opposition they encoun- 
tered that drove them to arms. Even their great hero, Kossuth, admitted 
that their aim was to Magyarize everybody and everything, even the stones, 
in Hungary. At the time of the Vienna revolution the Hungarian diet 



The Great Upheaval of 1848 557 

was in session at Presburg. At Kossuth's instigation it voted, and Fer- 
dinand accepted, a whole series of measures, including religious equality, 
jury trial, liberty of the press, and annual meeting of the diet at Pesth. 
Archduke Stephen, appointed Palatine or imperial lieutenant, organized 
a ministry with Count Louis Batthiany at its head, and Kossuth, Deak 
and Eoetvoes among its members. But the attempt to Magyarize all the 
provinces of St. Stephen's crown was naturally opposed by the Rumanians 
of Transylvania and the lugo-Slavs (Croatians, Slavonians, Dalmatians, 
Serbs, Bulgarians and Slovenes). The former, in a great national assem- 
bly at Blasiu, had protested against the union of Hungary voted by the 
small Magyar minority that tyrannized over Transylvania. Later on 
they aided the Austrians and Russians and committed terrible excesses, 
in reprisal for the injustice they had long endured. But the Croatians 
and Serbs had more cohesion and strength. The latter demanded home 
rule for the banate of Temesvar, and inflicted a series of checks on the 
Hungarians, whom their leader, Stratimirovich, accurately described as 
wanting hberty only for themselves and as oppressing the Slavs, Germans 
and Rumanians. The Croatians felt in like manner. Their ban (lord) 
or governor, Jelatchich, encouraged them to resist the Hungarian pre- 
tensions. Negotiations with the Magyars having failed, he led an army 
across the Drave (September 9). The imperial government had every 
reason to complain of Kossuth's conduct and that of his adherents. The 
latter disregarded the royal rights and openly wished for Austria's defeat 
in Italy. Hungarian soldiers in Radetski's army having deserted, the 
Hungarian minister of war refused to punish them. Then when, after 
the resignation of the archduke Stephen, a Pesth mob murdered his 
successor. General Lamberg, rupture became official. The emperor 
appointed Jelatchich his lieutenant in Hungary. The latter was beaten 
at Pakosd, but soon took out his revenge by helping Windischgraetz to 
capture Vienna. 

The Conquest of Hungary. — Once Vienna was subdued tne imperial 
armies, soon reinforced by troops from Italy, began to attack Hungary. 
Kossuth, invested with dictatorial powers, gave proof of wonderful energy, 
organizing the famous Honved battalions (defenders of the country) 
and Polish volunteers who came in droves after two Polish generals of 
great merit who had offered their services, Dembinski and Bem. But 
the Austrians had superiority of numbers and organization. Therefore 
at first their general, Windischgraetz, won a whole series of victories that 
forced the rebel government to flee to Debreczin behind the Tisza (Jan- 
uary, 1849). The Hungarians seemed already vanquished. They resumed 



558 The Great Upheaval of 1848 

the offensive, however, under Dembinski; but he, poorly supported because 
he v^as a foreigner, was beaten at Kapolna (February 26). Gorgei, a 
young general of thirty, whose inordinate ambition was to paralyze great 
talents, made good for this defeat, to which, moreover, he had contributed, 
by the victories of Goedoelloe, Vacs and Nagy-Sarlo (April), which enabled 
the Hungarians to take the Buda citadel by assault (May 21). Kossuth 
(April 14) had proclaimed the deposition of the house of Hapsburg-Lorraine. 
But two weeks later the Vienna official newspaper announced the inter- 
vention of the Russians. Nicholas I had decided to aid Austria for two 
reasons— he feared, and properly so, that the Hungarian movement would 
extend to Poland, and he wished to prevent the unification of Germany, 
which Prussia, rid of its rival, would but too easily carry out. From 
that time the Hungarians could struggle only for honor. Old Paskievitch 
led one hundred thousand men through Galicia; Haynau, Windischgraetz*s 
successor, was advancing from the west; fifty thousand Russians entered 
Transylvania and drove out Bem. Gorgei had assumed a most equivo- 
cal attitude; Kossuth put Bem in his place, and on July 28 proclaimed 
equality of races. But the situation was becoming more and more des- 
perate. The diet had had to flee to Szeged, and then to Arad. The 
Hungarians had been beaten at Temesvar. Kossuth at last abdicated 
the dictatorship in favor of Gorgei. Two days later (August 11) the 
latter capitulated to the Russians at Vilagos. Really, he could now do 
nothing else. Hungarian resistance, however, ended only with the cap- 
itulation of Komorom (Komorn) by Klapka (September 25). The Aus- 
trian government cruelly abused its victory. There were many condem- 
nations and confiscations. Haynau had nine generals hanged together 
at Arad. Many of the proscribed fled to Turkey, and, in spite of menaces, 
the sultan refused to surrender them. The State of siege was prolonged 
until 1854. But the Slavs, who by their fidelity had saved the monarchy, 
won nothing by the crushing of their old enemies. They also were sub- 
jected to the mastery of Germanic administration. 

Failure of the Lombard Revolt. — On receiving news of the revo- 
lution at Vienna, closely following that at Paris, the Austrian authorities 
in Italy lost their heads and the viceroy fled to Verona. Immediately 
(March 18, 1848) the Milanese rose in revolt. After four days' fighting 
the Austrians had to leave the city. On the same day (March 22) Venice 
drove out its governor, Zichy. On the 24th the king of Piedmont, Charles 
Albert, sent his battalions across the Ticino. Much against their will, 
the Pope, the grand duke of Tuscany, and even the king of Naples also 
sent troops against the Austrians. On the contrary, Charles Albert did 



The Great Upheaval of 1848 559 

not want French intervention, which he was advised to bring about. 
"Italy," he said, "would work out its own salvation." In the beginning, 
in fact, everything seemed to go for the best. Radetski (a Slav) had 
only fifty thousand men, excellent troops, it is true, and very reliable, 
being Slavs also, and Austrian Slavs were again to beat the Italians in 
1866. He had at first to withdraw from the Mincio to the Adige. But 
Charles Albert's slowness enabled him to form a junction with his colleague, 
Nugent, who brought him an aiding column through Venetia. On the 
other hand the Pope had disavowed (April 29) offensive war against Aus- 
tria, and on May 15 the king of Naples, victorious over a fresh insurrection, 
recalled his soldiers, whom their general, the aged Guglielmo Pepe, had 
tried in vain to entice to disobedience. From that time Radetski, rid of 
uneasiness from the region of the Po and Venetia, could act at his ease 
against the Piedmontese army, which was completely defeated at Cus- 
tozza (July 25). That same evening Charles Albert wrote to the French 
government asking it for aid and the promise of Lombardo-Venetia. 
But he obtained nothing from that side. On the other hand the Lom- 
bards, who had not consented very willingly to give themselves to the 
king of Piedmont, were becoming almost hostile. On August 9 Charles 
Albert had to sign an armistice by which he withdrew beyond the Ticino. 

The Revolution in Central Italy. — The check inflicted on Charles 
Albert enabled the republican party, which had never fully abdicated 
to the king, to try to resume the struggle on its own account. While Guer- 
razzi was arousing Tuscany (September) and forcing the grand duke 
to give power to the leader of the independence party, Montanelli, Pius IX 
was still trying conciliation by calling to the ministry the former ambassador 
from France, Count Rossi, an Italian by birth. That illustrious states- 
man wished to reconcile the Pope's temporal power with constitutional 
rule, a condition which, under circumstances, could have been brought 
about, but was odious to the partisans of revolution because he shared 
neither in the violence of their antipathies nor in the illusion of their hopes. 
A miscreant struck him down with a dagger (November 15) just as he 
was about to open the session of the parliament he had convened. The 
attitude of indifference assumed by the assembly, and still more the riot- 
ings by which for the next two days demanded of the Pope, and at last 
imposed on him, the recall of the former minister Mamiani, with whom 
the chief agitators were associated, made a decisive impression on the 
mind of Pius IX. He saw whither men wished to lead him, and on the 
25th he fled to Gaeta in the Bavarian ambassador's carriage. As the Roman 
parliament did not succeed in inducing him to return, it had to make way 



56o The Great Upheaval of 1848 

for a new assembly elected under the influence of the refugees who had 
flocked to Rome from every part of Italy (December, 1848). On Feb- 
ruary 9 following the' Constitutent recently elected, voted the deposition 
of the Pope and the establishment of the Roman Republic. On the i6th 
Tuscany also set itself up as a republic. 

Battle of Novara — the French in Rome. — On account of these 
events and the attitude of his parliament, Charles Albert resolved, though 
without hope, to have recourse once more to arms. On March 12 he repu- 
diated the armistice and sent towards the Ticino sixty-five thousand men 
commanded by the Pole Chrzanowski. Radetski had not as many, but 
they were veterans. Accordingly the result was not long in doubt. The 
Ticino had to be recrossed almost immediately after the Piedmontese 
troops had passed over it, and on the 23d they were beaten at Novara. 
That very evening Charles Albert abdicated in favor of his son, Victor 
Emmanuel II (born in 1828), and set out for Portugal, where he soon 
died (July 28, 1849). The new king had to begin his reign with the sup- 
pression of a revolt at Genoa, which refused to accept peace and pro- 
claimed the republic. The peace, moreover, was not very onerous — - 
seventy-five millions with the temporary occupation of Alessandria and 
the country as far as the Sesia. The war in the north was ended on April I 
by the capture of rebel Brescia. General Haynau took it by assault amid 
terrible scenes followed by a hundred executions. 

The defeat of Piedmont enabled Austria to intervene in the centre 
of the peninsula. The siege of Venice, prolonged until August 28, 1849, 
by the energetic defence of Manin, Pepe and Ulloa, could have no influence 
on the events taken as a whole. In Sicily and Tuscany the restorations 
were brought about by the local powers themselves. Sicily had revolted 
in 1848, and had chosen as king a Piedmontese prince, the duke of Genoa. 
But in September the king of Naples had recovered Messina. An arm- 
istice had followed. Hostilities having been resumed, General Filangieri 
drove the rebels from the island in a few weeks (May, 1849). In Tuscany, 
Ubaldino Peruzzi restored the grand duke to power in April, and the 
Austrians soon completed the work by reducing Livorno (Leghorn). A 
week later (May 18) Duke Charles III was restored at Parma. It was 
important not to let Austria bring about a similar restoration at Rome 
as it certainly would not have failed to do. The Pope had called for 
the aid of the four Catholic powers (Naples, Spain, Austria and France). 
President Louis Napoleon sent seven thousand m.en under General Oudinot 
(April, 1849). It seemed to be simply a second Ancona expedition. But 
as Oudinot had failed in an attack on Rome, defended by four times as 



The Great Upheaval of 1848 561 

many men (April 4), his army was increased to fully twenty-five thousand, 
and as the Legislative Assembly had supplanted the Constituent, the 
siege of Rome was conducted vigorously. The check of Ledru-Rollin's 
revolt in Paris made Mazzini and Garibaldi decide on leaving Rome 
already half captured (July 2). The Roman Assembly was dispersed 
by an infantry battalion and the Pope's power restored. But Pius IX 
returned only on April 4, 1850. 

Prussia and Austria — Rioting at Berlin. — Germany was appar- 
ently less disturbed than Italy, but the events of 1848 and the following 
years were to have for it consequences as serious as they were for the 
peninsula. As in Italy, moreover, the movement failed in consequence 
of disorder in the ideas of those who led it and of faulty management 
on the part of those v, ho should have directed it. The French revolution 
of 1848 at once produced an echo in the petty southern States, where 
local movements rather easily extorted various concessions from the princes. 
At Munich King Louis I abdicated. But what the Germans wished above 
all was the restoration of their country's power, which seemed to them 
possible only through unity. On March 5, 1848, an assembly of poli- 
ticians, held at Heidelberg, convened a preparatory parliament to meet 
at Frankfort, and the federal diet yielded. From that time the German 
unitarians were bent upon putting Prussia at the head of the future con- 
federation. As for Austria, the plan afterwards carried out by Bismarck, 
that of a close union between the old and the future empire, had already 
been adopted in the same environments. But the king of Prussia, Fred- 
erick WiUiam IV, a man of vague, floating and misty ideas, with many 
fancies and no will at all (he died insane), was not qualified to play the 
part which his brother was to fill so brilliantly. Ambitious like all the 
princes of his race, yet he did not v/ish to make the necessary concessions. 
His blunders brought about at Berlin the terrible riotirg. of March 18. 
It became necessary to send the troops away and to grant the formation 
of a national guard. The king had also to endure the humiliation of 
saluting the corpses of rioters brought for that purpose into the court 
yard of the royal palace. In the estimation of the German democrats 
that, March 18, did the greatest harm to Frederick William. As for 
the prince of Prussia (official titles of the heir presumptive when the reign- 
ing king had no son), the future emperor William I, he had had to flee 
to England for the tine being. 

The Frankfort Parliament and the Duchies Question. — The 

Prussian government's inability to direct the crisis to its own advantage 



at) 



562 The Great Upheaval of 1848 

gave the foremost place to the Frankfort parliament. The preliminary 
assembly had met at Frankfort (March 31 — ^April 5). It brought together 
the various opposition elements of all the German diets. By virtue of 
its decisions a national assembiy elected by universal suffrage w^as con- 
vened to formulate the future constitution of Germany and to provide 
for a permanent delegation of fifty m.embers entrusted with supervising 
elections. A revolt of the radicals in Baden, who wanted a German 
republic, was suppressed in April by the federal troops. There was peace, 
then, when the Frankfort parliament opened its sessions (May 18). In 
his opening speech the president (H. von Gagern) claimed unity for Ger- 
many and for the new parliament sovereignty. Archduke John was chosen 
(June 29) as vicar of the empire until the constitution was decided upon, 
and he selected a ministry. On July 4, discussion was begun on the 
rights of the German people. Two parties divided the assembly, namely, 
the radical left, deriving everything from popular sovereignty, and the 
right and centre, holding that the future German empire could be estab- 
lished only by agreement with the princes. There was also divergence 
on a far more important point, the future empire's boundaries. On this 
point the left was the more liberal to the neighboring nations. General 
von Radowitz was applauded when he declared that the Mincio was **a 
German frontier," and Bohemia, Posen and Dutch Limburg were claimed; 
and one orator spoke of the separated brethren of Alsace and Lorraine. 
An especially animated discussion took place on the Schleswig-Holstein 
question. The recent events in these duchies proved the real weakness 
of the assembly and encouraged the ill will of Austria, which could not 
let itself be put outside of Germany so easily, and of Prussia, whose king 
did not intend to pick up the imperial crown from the pavement. 

The Schleswig-Holstein question was a very old one. The German 
inhabitants of Holstein had wanted, especially since 1823, to free themselves 
from the king of Denmark and wished to drag with them Schleswig, a 
half Danish country which, after having originally formed a part of Jutland, 
had sometimes been connected with Holstein and sometimes separated 
from it. On March 21, 1848, a local movement at Copenhagen forced 
King Frederick VII to call to power the leaders of the party that wished 
to incorporate Schleswig with the kingdom of Denmark. The States 
of the two duchies, assembled at Kiel under the direction of the duke of 
Augustenburg, who claimed he would ultimately inherit Schleswig-Holstein, 
proclaimed their independence on March 24. Wrangel's Prussians at 
once crossed the frontier and drove the Danes into Jutland. But the 
intervention of Russia, England and Sweden compelled Frederick William 
IV to sign the Malmoe armistice (August 26). The Frankfort assembly 



The Great Upheaval of 1848 563 

undertook to disapprove of the agreement, but, as Prussia had carried 
it out, the deputies had to accept what they could not prevent (September 
17). Thereupon the left, turning to account the patriotic feelings of the 
people of Frankfort, on the i6th provoked a bloody riot in which two 
deputies were killed by the mob and which was suppressed only with the 
aid of Prussian troops. From that time there was a violent rupture between 
the two factions of the assembly, the demonstration of whose impotence 
was complete. 

End of the Frankfort Parliament. — The restoration of monarchical 
authority in Austria and Prussia brought it to an end. The Prussian 
Chamber of Deputies, taking advantage of the government's weakness, 
had assumed an increasingly demagogical attitude. But by doing so 
it had exasperated the army and the minor nobility, which it attacked 
that is, it had put itself in a state of war with the most formidable forces 
of the kingdom. Frederick William IV also felt very much hurt at the 
Chamber's encroachment on the military domain, which the kings of 
Prussia have always regarded as absolutely reserved. Accordingly, 
on November 5 reaction began with the Brandenhurg-ManteufFel min- 
istry, which restored order in Berlin with the troops back from Schleswig, 
and transferred the Chamber to Brandenburg, where it was soon dissolved 
(December 5). A second met the same fate (April 27, 1849). The able 
minister, while retaining the reasonable portions of the reforms of 1848, 
took care to regulate the electoral system in such a way as to assure pre- 
ponderance to the property-owning classes. The change of situation in 
Prussia reduced to naught every decision of the Frankfort parliament. 
After long discussions the latter at last decided, by a majority of four 
votes, that the direction of confederated Germany would belong to a 
hereditary emperor. On March 27, 1849, Frederick William IV was 
elected. But, besides the little taste he felt for an election of this sort 
the king of Prussia had, on account of Russia and Austria, the strongest 
reasons for declining the honor, and did so on April 27, giving as his reason 
that he did not want to become emperor without the consent of the princes. 
From that time the role of the Frankfort parliament was ended. Austria, 
which had complained the year before of its evidently hostile decision, 
that no German country could be united with another except by personal 
bonds, notified the parliament that it would no longer be recognized. The 
Austrian deputies were then recalled in April. Prussia did likewise in 
May, and the petty States soon imitated the example of the two great 
powers. Disturbances broke out in Saxony and Hanover during May 
and were suppressed by the Prussian army. Reduced to about a hundred 



564 The Great Upheaval of 1848 

members, the assembly left Frankfort on May 3 and took refuge at 
Stuttgart, where the local government soon dissolved it (June 19). The 
Prussian army, under Prince William, soon (June and July) got the better 
of the revolt in the Rhine provinces. The effort to unify Germany had 
been a decided failure. 

Prussia's Ambition — the Zollverein. — ^Then Frederick William IV 
tried to revive the project in another form. After having, by means of 
a note of April 26, convened the princes vc^ith the object of examining a 
reform of the federal constitution, a month later he signed with his Saxon 
and Hanoverian debtors the treaty known as that of the three kings, to 
which tv/enty-eight States gave their adhesion. But the Prussian govern- 
ment lost valuable time, which Austria devoted to subduing Hungary. 
After having at first consented to a temporary agreement by which the 
two great German powers were to divide authority between them until 
May I, 1850, Schwarzenburg took advantage of the particularist acts of 
resistance that had shown themselves in the treaty known as that of the 
four kings (of Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Saxony and Hanover), dated Feb- 
ruary 27, 1850, for the purpose of claiming (April 26) the reopening of 
the old diet. Prussia and its adherents had, moreover, just failed in 
Holstein. The war having been resumed in 1849, the Prussians had 
been beaten at Fredericia (July 6); the foreign powers had imposed an 
armistice (July), and the Danes had regained possession of Schleswig. 
Holstein was also recovered when Prussia had signed the peace (July 2, 
1850) and the treaty of London (August 2), except as to certain reserva- 
tions in favor of the duchies, guaranteed the integrity of the Danish mon- 
archy. Prussia then wanted to compensate itself by intervening in 
Electoral Hesse, where the Elector Frederick William had come into 
conflict with his subjects. Austria, supported by the petty German States, 
protested in the name of the Confederation and its rights. On both sides 
the armies were mobilized. War seemed inevitable and had every chance 
of turning in favor of Austria, when Prussia and its prime minister Man- 
teuflrel, frightened at the danger, consented to accept the Olmutz stipula- 
tions, by which the advantage was given wholly to Austria on the Hesse 
and Holstein questions. Bismarck himself had advised this concession, 
which he regarded as commanded by prudence. Austria's victory was 
soon followed by the reopening of the federal diet (June 13, 185 1) in its 
old form. But the energetic Schwarzenburg did not long survive his 
success. Exhausted by the ardor of his life, he died on April 5, 1852. 

The man who was to resume the work that had failed in 1848 had 
just come into political life. The events of that period convinced him 



The Great Upheaval of 1848 565 

that Prussia would attain its end only "by blood and iron," as he said 
himself. The Prussian capitulation of Olmutz contained the germ of 
the war of 1866. From that time, however, there remained to Prussia 
an advantage which Austria could not take from it, that of having become 
the directing power of Germany from the economical point of view. In 
18 19 it had inaugurated the customs union of the German States by an 
agreement with the prince of Schwarzburg-Sonderhausen. Various like 
treaties had followed and especially (1833-6) important adhesions (Bavaria, 
Saxony and Baden) had been multiplied to such an extent that the Zoll- 
verein had at last taken in the greater part of present Germany. In spite 
of Schwarzenberg's efforts, Prussia also won Hanover and Oldenburg, 
and (April 8, 1853) obtained the renewal of the customs union for twelve 
years, after having, however, made concessions to Austria by a commercial 
treaty (February 19, 1853); thirty-five million Germans were comprised 
in it. Economical union was preparing the way for future political union. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 



The Age of Napoleon the Little 



Genesis of the Second Empire. — ^No sooner had "his uncle in minia- 
ture" assumed the reigns of government at Paris than he began to scheme 
for the revival of the empire that had fallen for the second time at Waterloo. 
The repubUcan party held only a third of the seats in the new Assembly that 
assumed the legislative power on May 26, 1849; ^^^ the conservatives were 
divided into several groups of monarchists of various shades. In the minor- 
ity the radicals had only seventy votes, but they wished to gain the upper 
hand by violent means. Alleging that the expedition to Rome was a viola- 
tion of the constitution, Ledru-Rollin tried to rouse Paris to rebellion, but 
the effort was a complete failure (June 13), and he succeeded in escaping to 
London. "It is time," said Louis Napoleon, "for good men to regain con- 
fidence and for the wicked to tremble." During the summer of 1870 laws 
were enacted limiting the electoral suffrage to those paying direct taxes, re- 
straining the freedom of the press, and establishing liberty of education. 
The last of these measures was the only one that remained in force very 
long. State monopoly of schools was restored only thirty .odd years later 
by the Third Republic. 

The Assembly wanted to reestablish a monarchical government, but on 
its character the Legitimists and the Orleanists could not agree. On the 
other hand, the President, whom the majority leaders at first thought they 
could easily keep in control, was assuming airs of increasing independence 
and authority. On October 31, 1849, he had formed a ministry to suit him- 
self and sent a very significant message to the legislature. In the summer of 
1850 he visited the departments and was welcomed ever}'where with excla- 
mations of *'Vive r Empereur!" which were repeated on October 10 by the 
soldiers on the occasion of a review at Satory. The general councils de- 
manded amendment of the constitution so that the President could be re- 
elected. The Assembly became uneasy until (November) Louis Napoleon 
had promised it that he would have recourse neither to surprise nor violence; 
but it again became alarmed when (January 9, 1851) General Changarnier 
was removed from the command of Paris, and in revenge it overthrew the 
666 



The Age of Napoleon the Little 567 

ministry. In announcing a new one the President formally asked for 
revision of the constitution. The three-fourths majority necessary for the 
adoption of this measure could not be obtained. The Assembly likewise 
refused to restore universal suffrage, which Louis Napoleon had very shrewd- 
ly asked them to do (November 4). The great crisis was at hand. On 
October 28 the revolution ministry had been formed with faithful hench- 
men in every important department. During the night between December 
I and 2 sixteen deputies were arrested, and at the same time proclamations 
announced the dissolution of the Assembly, the restoration of universal suf- 
frage, and a plebiscite. There were attempts at resistance, but every gather- 
ing was dispersed, including even that of the supreme court. On December 
3 and 4 there were uprisings in several sections of Paris; but the troops 
triumphed easily over the insurgents, who, indeed, were far from numerous. 
Efforts made in various departments of the centre and south hurt the move- 
ment, for some disgraced themselves with acts of sheer pillage that frightened 
law-abiding men. Over eleven thousand persons were condemned to 
deportation or exile, eighty representatives were banished, and the republican 
party was disorganized. A popular vote (plebiscite) taken on December 20 
almost unanimously ratified the revolution. From that time, in fact, the 
empire may be said to have been founded. 

Restoration of the Empire. — The plebiscite had not only ratified the 
"coup d'etat," but had in addition confided to the Prince-President the 
duty of drafting a new constitution. This instrument, an intentional imita- 
tion of that of the year VIII, appeared on January 14, 1852. On the future 
Napoleon III it conferred the powers of a constitutional monarch in ap- 
pearance, but of an absolute one in reality. The presidency was given to 
him for ten years, with the exclusive right of initiating laws, and that of 
negotiating treaties, declaring war and signing peace. He appointed to 
every office and received the oath of every office-holder. Many resigned 
rather than take this oath. The ministers, appointed and dismissed by the 
President only, did not form a cabinet and were responsible only for their 
personal acts. The President alone was regarded as responsible for the gov- 
ernment. The Council of States, whose members v/ere named by the Presi- 
dent, had the same powers as that of the year VIII, and so had the Senate, 
designated also by the President for life, while the Deputies were elected by 
universal suffrage, generally, however, at the dictation of the prefect. The 
repressive measures that had rid Louis Napoleon of fourteen thousand in- 
fluential enemies so disorganized the hostile parties that for some years 
they were reduced to impotence. The year 1852 was marked by an agitation 
organized with a view to the restoration of the empire. The prince tra- 



568 The Age of Napoleon the Little 

versed the departments and was enthusiastically received by the great ma- 
jority of the people. He no longer concealed his design and strove to dis- 
pel every prejudice. He assured the people that the empire would mean 
peace. Yet he was unintentionally a prophet when he declared at Bor- 
deaux.-' "Woe to him who will be the first in Europe to give the signal for a 
collision whose consequences would be incalculable." On returning to 
Paris (November 4) he asked the Senate to restore the imperial dignity. 
It had the project ratified by an enormous majority of the popular vote 
(November 7), and on December 2, 1852, the new emperor was proclaimed 
under the name of Napoleon HI, chosen, he said, because he did not wish 
to pass over in silence the regular, though ephemeral, title of the son of the 
head of his family. 

Revival of the Eastern Question. — In spite of his promise to give 
France a peaceful reign, Napoleon embraced every opportunity to plunge 
into war, and in every case did so in such a way as to strengthen Prussia, his 
country's most dangerous enemy. His first opportunity for thus blundering 
arose almost immediately after his ascending the throne. At the time of the 
Straits treaty (1841) Nicholas I had had to abandon the advantages he 
might have derived for his empire from the renewal of the treaty of Unkiar 
Skelessi, but on that account he had not given up the idea of one day real- 
izing the plans of Peter the Great and Catharine II regarding Constanti- 
nople, plans which England could have frustrated by continuing Canning's 
policy in 1828. Like Catharine, Nicholas counted on succeeding by means 
of the partition system. In 1844 he had made to England proposals to this 
effect. The events of 1848 seemed to furnish him with the opportunity 
for going a step farther. The general disturbance caused by the fall of 
Louis Philippe's throne made itself felt, in fact, on the Pruth and the lower 
Danube. As in Italy and Germany, the Rumanian educated classes, now 
familiarized with European culture, aspired to freeing the country so as to 
give it modern institutions. Men even spoke of a greater Rumania that 
would comprise Transylvania, held in bondage by the Hungarians. In 
Moldavia Prince Sturdza succeeded in arresting at its commencement a 
movement that was but vaguely planned, but at Bucharest Prince Bibesco, 
less shrewd or less fortunate, was obliged to abdicate (June 25, 1848). 
The Turks, seeing that the progress of Rumanian nationality could not 
but be advantageous to them in the direction of Russia, would have liked to 
let matters take their course. But precisely for that reason the czar im- 
mediately had the principalities occupied by his troops. The treaty of 
Balta-Liman (May i, 1849) ^^^^ from the principalities the right to name 
their hospodars and to have elected assemblies. The Russians stayed there 









THE WAR BALLOON. 

The employment of the balloon as a means of ascei-taining the enemy's 
position has been carried to a successful development in modern warfare. This 
picture taken dnrinjj; the campaign of the British and Boers in South Africa 
shows the English making preparations for an ascent. Their enemy tried in 
vain with rifle and cannon to puncture it. 



The Age of Napoleon the Little 569 

until 1 85 1. Then they tried to go farther and, inaugurating the tactics 
that were to succeed a quarter of a century later, stirred up revolts in 
Bosnia and Bulgaria (1849-51), and later (1852) an attack by the Mon- 
tenegrin prince Danilo, their client. But the Turkish general Omer 
Pasha (Michael Lattas, a Croatian renegade) got the better of the rebels, 
as much by policy as by arms. As for Montenegro, after a three months' 
bloody struggle, Austria's intervention brought about the suspension 
of hostilities (March, 1853). 

Russia and the Christians in Turkey. — Beaten here, the czar 

renewed the quarrel in another form, more general and more dangerous. 
The question known as that of the Holy Places furnished him with the 
opportunity. In the eighteenth century and during the Revolution the 
Greeks had seized many of the sanctuaries reserved to Catholic religious 
orders under duly recognized French protection from time immemorial. 
In spite of protests, the affair was still pending when President Louis 
Napoleon undertook to settle it (May, 185 1). In that way he wished to 
revive France's prestige in the Orient. The Porte, seriously embarrassed 
on account of Russia, temporized, then pretended to yield (February 9, 
1852), but took advantage of the French ambassador's absence to make 
opposite concessions to Russia, and then yielded again to the French 
agent's energetic protests. Nicholas deemed it opportune to take advan- 
tage of this affair to bring about a quarrel of a general order that, he thought, 
would in one way or another place the Ottoman empire at his mercy. 
He believed, in fact, that he could absolutely count on Prussia, and espec- 
ially on Austria, which he had just saved. England in his opinion could 
be won over by offers of partition. In this way France, completely isolated, 
would have, as in 1840, merely to look on. The relations between the 
czar and the nevv^ emperor of the French were, moreover, very unfriendly. 
Nicholas had applauded the revolution of December 2, and there was 
no doubt that, if Napoleon III had shown complacency for his policy, 
the autocrat would easily have come to an understanding with him. But 
as he had reason to think that such would not be the case, as the affair 
of the Holy Places proved, the Russian emperor thought he ought to assume 
towards his new fellow-ruler an attitude like to that which he had on 
several occasions observed tov\^ards Louis Philippe, and still more pro- 
nounced. At first he tried to prevent the German courts from recognizing 
Napoleon III, and then, obliged to recognize him himself (January 3, i853)> 
he affected to remind him very sharply of the treaties of 18 15, and, instead 
of the title brother used between sovereigns, characterized him as good 
friend, which is that used in regard to elected heads of States. Napoleon 



570 The Age of Napoleon the Little 

was not to forget this apparent insult to his vanity. But as Austria had 
brought the Porte to peaceful measures in Bosnia and the question of 
the Holy Places seemed on the way to settlement, it looked as if the chances 
of conflict were removed. The czar, however, was firmly bent on not 
missing the opportunity he thought he had within his grasp. On February 
10, 1853, his envoy extraordinary, Prince MenchikofF, set out for Constan- 
tinople entrusted with offering the sultan a permanent alliance and also 
with demanding from him for the czar the protectorate over all the Ortho- 
dox in the Turkish empire. By submitting, Abdul Medjid would have 
become a vassal (February 28). 

War Begirn between Turkey and Russia. — Menchikoff had asked 
the Turkish ministers to observe secrecy. But towards the end of March 
they revealed everything to the diplomatic agents of the western powers. 
England, moreover, was already in a position to know what to expect. 
In three conversations which he had had with the British ambassador 
(January 9 and 14 and February 21) the czar had completely revealed 
himself, proposing to the English to share the future succession of the 
"sick man," offering them Candia and Egypt, and asking for himself, 
though in a roundabout way (as a depot, he said), Constantinople, while 
the rest of European Turkey would form independent principalities under 
Russian protection. "If England and I," he added, "succeed in coming 
to an understanding on this affair, everything else is of slight importance 
to me, I pay little attention to what the Others may do or think." But 
England was sure of dragging France with it, and therefore had no need 
whatever of accepting a partition which would have been to it only a last 
resource. In April it rejected Nicholas's offers. On the other hand, 
its ambassador in Constantinople, the able and energetic Lord Stratford 
de Redcliffe, so as to compel Menchikoff to show his hand, on May 4, 
in agreement with the French ambassador, settled the question of the 
Holy Places. It was then clearly necessary for the czar's representative 
to formulate his hitherto secret demands in a public ultimatum (May 5). 
The Turks having refused, Menchikoff left Constantinople ostentatiously, 
saying that he departed in an frock-coat, but would return in a tunic. 
On June ii the Russian chancellor, Nesselrode, announced in a circular 
that the czar was going to have the principalities occupied by way of 
guarantee. And in fact, on July 3, the Russian troops entered and 
were soon in possession of them. Early in June France and England 
answered by sending their fleets to Besika bay, at the entrance to the 
Dardanelles. Austria, which was in extrem.e dread of war, then tried to 
bring about an arrangement (Vienna conference, July 24), but the means 



The Age of Napoleon the Little 571 

which it imagined to that end rested on a pure equivocation. The Turks, 
advised by the English and French ambassadors, refused to accept it, and 
then, the czar having ordered to be published in his empire (June 25) a sort 
of call for a crusade against the infidel, the sultan, urged by his people, 
decided on war (October 4, 1853). 

Sinope^France and England Join Turkey. — ^The Turks imme- 
diately gave proof of greater energy than had been expected of them. 
In Asia they captured the Russian fort of St. Nicholas, only an ephemeral 
success, however. In Europe Omer Pasha correctly guessed the enemy's 
plan of entering Bulgaria through Widdin and thence marching by way 
of Sofia to join hands with the Greeks and turn the Balkans. He occupied 
Kalafat, drew the enemy by a feint on Oltenitza, and then withdrew when 
Widdin, protected by garrisoned Kalafat, found itself entirely safe. In 
the beginning Nicholas had affected moderation, believing the Turks 
would soon be at the end of their resources. Furious at his disappoint- 
ment, he ordered his Black Sea fleet to act. On November 30 Admiral 
Nakhimof, after a bloody three hours' combat, annihilated twelve Ottoman 
war ships anchored in front of Sinope. This exploit dispelled the hope 
of peace still entertained by the Austrian prime minister. England, 
aroused by Lord Palmerston, and France, where Napoleon III asked 
only to follow, formally notified Russia that their fleets, which were already 
at Constantinople, were about to enter the Black Sea and that the Russian 
flag would no longer be permitted to appear there (December 27), a threat 
immediately carried out. The events which Nicholas had regarded as 
impossible had come to pass — France and England were acting together. 
His pride kept him from receding. In spite of the refusals he had met 
with from Prussia and Austria, he did not wish to accept the offers of 
the Vienna conference, and. Napoleon III having made a last effort in 
an autograph letter to him (January 29), the autocrat haughtily answered 
his "good friend" that he could not yield without dishonoring himself. 
On March 19 he received a last Anglo-French summons (to evacuate 
the principalities before April 30), which preceded the declaration of 
war by only a few days. On March 12 England and France had become 
Turkey's allies. On April 10 they in their turn united in a treaty by 
virtue of which they were to conclude peace only together and without 
seeking any private advantage. 

The Russians, assuming the offensive, drove the Turks back on 
Kalafat (January 28) and, crossing the Danube at three points, laid siege 
to Silistria (April 14), which was energetically defended. The approach 
of the Franco-English troops and Austria's equivocal attitude compelled 



572 The Age of Napoleon the Little 

the Russians to withdraw. Ere long they even evacuated the principalities, 
where the Austrians took their place. 

Invasion of the Crimea. — France and England had each at first 
provided for only twenty-five thousand men commanded respectively 
by Marshal Saint-Arnaud and Lord Raglan. This small army, in con- 
sequence of the unheard-of disorder attending its being put on foot, could 
act only in June by taking as its base of operations Varna, where its stores 
came near being destroyed by a terrible conflagration. The Russians 
had already withdrawn, and an expedition sent after them into the unheath- 
ful Dobrudja succeeded only in producing a cholera epidemic in the regi- 
ments. Seeing Austria's neutrality, a direct attack on Bessarabia was 
out of the question. After having hesitated for a moment between Sebasto- 
pol and the Caucasus, the allies decided on the Crimea. England, with 
correct practical judgment, thought the war should above all end in the 
destruction of Russian power in the Black Sea. After having had general 
Canrobert reconnoiter the coasts, the leaders of the allied forces decided 
on landing at Eupatoria so as to march rapidly on the works north of 
Sebastopol, which were known to be rather weak. From September 
14 to 18 the fleet discharged sixty thousand French, English and Turks 
on the shore. The Russians did not expect such an attack. Prince 
MenchikofF had at his disposal only fifty-two thousand men, the bulk of 
the Russian armies being much farther west. He immediately collected 
all he could (38,000) to dispute with the enemy the crossing of the Alma, 
a small river with a steep southern bank. It was by that approach, which 
the Russian general thought inaccessible, that Bosquet with his African 
troops fell upon the Russian left. The centre (French) having in its turn 
forced the Alma, the English, who had advanced only with extreme slow- 
ness, could then make progress. At four in the afternoon the Russians 
retreated, but as there were no cavalry but the English, pursuit was impos- 
sible because they did not arrive in time. 

Siege of Sebastopol. — It was also the slowness of the English that 
delayed the march on Sebastopol. Thus did MenchikoflP have time to 
strengthen the place for defence. A portion of the Russian fleet, now 
useless, was sunk to obstruct entrance to the harbor. Between fifteen 
and twenty thousand sailors, under Admirals Kornilof, Istomin and 
Nakhimof, all three of whom were to perish defending the city, reinforced 
the garrison. The city's civic population had been reduced from forty- 
five to twelve thousand souls. Colonel Todleben, manager of the defence, 



The Age oi Napoleon the Little 573 

could thUs, with very considerable effective forces and material, — the 
fleet alone had furnished eight hundred guns, — ably create a whole system 
of earthworks which, though improvised, were none the less effective. 
The siege of Sebastopol was, then, less a siege than a struggle of an army 
defending its positions against another reduced to attacking them by 
the usual besieging processes. In the end there were nearly fifty miles 
of galleries and trenches dug by the allies. On the north side, which it 
had been impossible to invest, the Russians received everything they 
needed and kept in constant relations with the army ever holding the 
country and trying on several occasions to make the invaders raise the siege. 
The Anglo-French, giving up the idea of attacking from the north, crossed 
the Tchernaia to make an assault on Sebastopol on the south. They 
installed themselves on the Chersonnesus plateau, a natural fortress from 
which they could brave diversions coming from without, and took posses- 
sion of Kamiech and Balaklava bays, through which they could revictual 
much more easily than their adversaries, who were reduced to having 
everything brought by interminable convoys. Marshal Saint-Arnaud 
died of cholera on September 27 and was succeeded by the incompetent 
Canrobert. His colleague. Lord Raglan, an old man of sixty-six and 
a veteran of the Napoleonic wars, could not make his dignity compensate 
for his headstrong incapacity. The siege was going to absorb for a year 
the resources of the belligerents. Accordingly the other operations were 
of minor importance. In the Black Sea, on April 22, the allied fleet had 
bombarded the military port of Odessa, but respected the city and the 
commercial harbor. T^ft Russians themselves destroyed their posts 
on the coast near the Caucasus. In the Baltic, after despairing of an attack 
on Kronstadt, a descent was made on the Aland islands, where an unfinished 
fortress was seized (August 16). In 1855 Sveaborg was bombarded. 
Other not very profitable expeditions were aimed against a fortified mon- 
astery in the White Sea and the posts of the sea of Okhotsk and Kam- 
chatka. 

Balaklava and Inkermann — Death of Nicholas I. — In October 
MenchikofF, reinforced, tried to disturb the siege by attacking Balaklava. 
The Russians were repulsed (on the 25th), but, as they were dragging 
away some English guns, Lord Raglan, from stupid pride, caused the 
massacre of half of Lord Cardigan's light cavalry brigade in an effort 
to recapture them. On November 5 the English, who were very imper- 
fectly picketed, were taken unawares by the Russians at Inkermann. 
They resisted with their usual tenacity, at first refusing the aid of the 
French, on whom they were at last obliged to call, and General Bosquet 



574 A he Age of Napoleon the Little 

delivered them. The battle had been a bloody one, the Russians losing 
eleven thousand men and five generals, the English three thousand, and 
the French eight hundred. Then came an extremely severe w^inter. The 
fleet came near perishing in a storm (November 14). The troops suffered 
terribly, especially the English, who v^ere incapable of bearing the priva- 
tions which a faulty administration did not spare them. Their effective 
strength fell to ten thousand men. For this reason they had to leave the 
attack on the Malakof fort to the French. On February 17, 1855, the 
Russians were again beaten in an attack on the Turks at Eupatoria. This 
reverse killed the czar, whose pride suffered intensely, less perhaps from 
the defeats of his army and the checking of his policy than from the loss 
of the prestige which he had hitherto enjoyed with his people. Already 
ill, he committed every act of imprudence calculated to bring on death, 
and expired on March 2, 1855. His successor, Alexander II, was very 
different from him in character and tendencies. But he could not all 
at once disavow his father's policy. Accordingly the v/ar went on, dragging 
along in siege operations. Napoleon III, who pretended to direct them 
from Paris, at last wanted to go himself and assume command of the 
armies (March), but was dissuaded. Now Piedmont, in the interest 
of Italian politics, had joined the alliance (January 26, 1855) and sent 
fifteen thousand men under General La Marmora. In directing the 
siege Niel had succeeded Bizot, killed on April 11. Canrobert, at odds 
with the English, resigned his command on May 16, and General Pelissier 
took his place. Circumstances were now more favorable. Negotiations 
opened at Vienna in March had shown (June) that Russia would not 
yield on the limitation of its forces in the Black Sea as long as Sebastopol 
was left standing. On the other hand the capture of Kertch had cut 
off one of the roads for revictualling the Russians. Lastly, General Todle- 
ben, seriously wounded, ceased to direct the defence (June 20), and Lord 
Raglan's death gave the command of the English to General Simpson. 
It had been seen that the capture of Sebastopol depended on that of the 
fort called the Malakof tower. On June 7 the French had taken the 
White Works and the English the Green Nipple. On June 18 French 
and English united in an assault on the Malakof, but were repulsed with 
a loss of six thousand men, of whom seven were generals. On August 16 
the French had their revenge by defeating, with the aid of the Piedmontese, 
the Russians at Traktir. From August 17 the bombardment of Sebastopol 
cost the Russians fifteen hundred men a day. At last, on September 8, 
MacMahon captured the famous tower by assault, and Sebastopol fell. 
Before evacuating it the Russians themselves destroyed everything the 
bombardment had spared. Against England's 97,000 France had sent 



The Age of Napoleon the Little 575 

309,000 men to this war, and its losses were 94,000 men and an addition 
of fifteen hundred million francs to the national debt. 

The Treaty of Paris. — Surely that was at least enough to pay for 
mere glory. England, Turkey and Piedmont would have liked to continue 
the war, as they would only gain thereby. The English were already 
contemplating a decisive expedition against Kronstadt, and Sweden had 
just signed a treaty with the allies (November 21). But Napoleon III 
wanted no more of it. He was driven to this resolution by domestic reasons, 
and also by the desire to become allied with Russia so as to satisfy with 
its aid (as was actually to happen) his Italian Utopias of which he already 
intimated he had been dreaming. Russia was far from being conquered, 
but its finances were in a most deplorable condition, and peace was neces- 
sary to it. Austria, whose weakness after the Hungarian crisis and fear 
of Prussia, where Bismarck was already concocting his plans, had kept 
neutral, made the way easy for negotiations to be opened. As regards 
France and England it confined itself to vague promises, and to Russia 
it proposed the acceptance of guarantees to which the conclusion of peace 
was subordinate. When the capture of Kars by the Russians (Novem- 
ber 27) had brought them a satisfaction of pride that made it more easy 
for them to yield, Austria decided on submitting to them an ultimatum 
(December 16) which it knew would be accepted, a course advised also 
by Prussia. The terms of peace were agreed upon in the Paris congress 
(February 25 — March 30, 1856). The independence and integrity of 
Turkey were declared to be of European interest, and any conflict between 
the Ottoman empire and one of the signing powers was to justify the med- 
iation of the others. The Straits treaty was renewed, the free navigation 
of the Danube assured, and an international commission entrusted with 
seeing to the maintenance of the necessary works at its estuary. To 
Moldavia was to be added a portion of Russian Bessarabia, so that Russia 
would not touch on the great river. The Russian protectorate over the 
principalities was abolished. The Aland islands in the Baltic were neu- 
tralized. But the chief clause was that relating to the Black Sea, from 
which the war vessels of all nations were excluded. The sultan once 
more proclaimed religious liberty, acknowledged the civil equality of all 
his subjects, and admitted Christians to military service — promises that 
were pot to be kept. 

This treaty marked the apogee of Napoleon's reign. Not that he 
had not already made many mistakes, but they did not yet appear on the 
surface, and success covered everything. Moreover, scarcely was he the 
conqueror of Russia when he became its ally, and that alliance lasted 



576 The Age of Napoleon the Little 

until 1863, when the affairs of Poland enabled England to destroy it. 
The ways of his politics were devious and led to results he had not dreamt 
of. But that England also blundered in undertaking that Crimean war 
a Tory English premier was long afterwards compelled to admit. 

Piedmont's Interest in the War and the Treaty. — During the 
Crimean war Napoleon, when receiving Victor Emmanuel and Cavour 
in Paris, asked the latter what he could do for Italy. Piedmont, looking 
to the future, had, as we have seen, joined the alliance against Russia. 
Its troops made a good showing at Traktir, and its plenipotentiaries had 
to be admitted to the Paris congress. Cavour, assured of the moral support 
of all the powers against Austria, did not hesitate to bring up the Italian 
question there. That question v/as, on his part, the object of two notes, 
in the former of v.hich, dated March 27, 1856, he asked that foreign troops 
cease to occupy the Roman States and that the Pope grant reforms. In 
the latter, sent on the very day on which the congress closed, he complained 
of Austrian preponderance in Italy, the consequence of which, he said, 
was revolutionary agitation and the obligation incumbent on Piedmont 
of being obliged to have recourse to ruinous armaments and perhaps 
even so.r.e day to extreme measures. The former note alone received 
a favorable, but wholly Platonic, answer. Cavour, indeed, expected 
nothing more. He had wished only to put the question solemnly. From 
that time the difficulties with Austria and its wards never ceased. In 
1856 Napoleon broke with Ferdinand of Naples, on the pretext that the 
latter was governing his States badly. England did likewise. Cavour, 
on his part, before the whole Piedmontese parliament, made allusions 
to the future war (May, 1856) and encouraged the newspaper attacks 
on Austria. The emperor Francis Joseph having complained, he was 
answered that, if liberty of the press did not exist at Milan, such was not 
the case at Turin; whereupon diplomatic relations were broken off (Febru- 
ary, 1857). Napoleon on his part strove, during the year 1857, to win 
all the powers over to his projects, for that purpose visiting Alexander II 
at Stuttgart, then Queen Victoria at Osborne, sendirg Prince Napoleon 
to Berlin, settling the Neufchatel question, which had come near making 
Prussia attack Switzerland, and that of the union of the Rumanian prin- 
cipalities, a union to which Austria was extremely hostile. Once more, 
however, he hesitated about proceeding quickly. So as to get him to act, 
a terrible conspiracy was organized against him. On January 14, 1858, 
a former member of the Roman Constituent, Felice Orsini, recently arrived 
from England, hurled at the emperor, as he was on his way in a carriage 
to the Opera, three bombs that killed or wounded one hundred and twenty 



The Age of Napoleon the Little 577 

persons. Napoleon escaped, but felt he would succumb some day or 
other. Accordingly, while not daring to pardon Orsini, he unwisely had 
published in the "Moniteur" a first letter in which the latter, after giving 
him clearly to understand that he would have imitators, implored him 
to restore to Italy the independence which its children had lost, he said, 
through the conduct of the French; then also a second letter in which 
Orsini, declaring himself satisfied regarding His Majesty's feelings, invited 
his fellow-countrymen to abstain thereafter from attacking him. During 
1858 Napoleon secretly came to an understanding, without the know- 
ledge of his ministers themselves, with the Piedmontese cabinet. The 
final arrangement was completed July 20-22 at Plombieres, directly 
between the emperors and Cavour. Victor Emmanuel would have noith- 
ern Italy and would cede Savoy and the county of Nice to France. 

Characters of Cavour and Napoleon. — Though born in the old 
Piedmontese aristocracy, Camillo Benso, count of Cavour, had rallied 
to the Liberal party. Trained by deep studies and long journeying 
abroad, he united administrative with political talents. Probably he 
was the most powerful, and especially the most complete, statesman of 
the nineteenth century. After Novara, peace was obligatory for some 
years. Minister of commerce and agriculture in 1850, of finances in 
1851, and president of the council in 1852, he signed commercial treaties 
with the great foreign States, multiplied railroads and telegraph lines, 
and restored the budget to a sound condition. So as completely to win 
over the advanced party, for whose leaders Piedmont served as a refuge, 
and to give pledges to the party of the Italian revolution, he secularized 
the property of the clergy, which brought on rupture of the relations with 
the court of Rome. The Pope excommunicated all those who, in any 
manner whatever, had taken part in these measures. Cavour and the 
king himself were thus affected. 

But the Piedmontese minister fully acknowledged what from pride 
the men of 1848, and especially Charles Albert, had not wished to confess. 
Italy could not free itself alone. It needed the aid of a great power, and 
that aid only France could give. This, it is true, was entirely contrary 
to French interests. "French preponderance," the famous Stein said 
after Jena, "depends on the parcelling of Germany and Italy and will 
disappear with it." But about 1859 very few men indeed were acquainted 
with these prophetic words, and, moreover, they would have been made 
a subject of mockery. Italy was in fashion then, as Greece had been some 
thirty years before. And Napoleon III, completely foreign in origin, 
education, tendencies and character to every tradition of France, was but 

37 



578 The Age of Napoleon the Little 

too much inclined to urge it upon that fatal path on which he himself, 
moreover, was to find his own ruin in the midst of a national disaster. 
Like his uncle. Napoleon III was a cosmopolitan who pictured to himself, 
and in very good faith too, that the emperial power had been given to him 
only to make the principles of "nationalities triumph, and consequently 
to destroy the treaties of 1815. He hoped indeed, it is true, that France 
would derive advantage from the overturnings to be brought about, but 
his mind was far too indolent and imprecise to win anything in such games. 
Like Alexander I, he had a hazy intellect and a vacillating character; 
he liked to be tricky, mixed in contradictory projects as if it pleased him, 
in turn underwent the most opposite influences, becam.e afraid in the 
course of his undertakings, generally stopped or wished to stop half way, 
and strangely mingled with his politics dynastic interest and humanitarian 
dreams. Napoleon III, moreover, thought he was specially bound to 
Italy. He had taken part in the Romagna insurrection and had become 
affiliated with the Italian secret societies, which did not permit him to 
forget his pledges. 

Austria Driven to War. — It now remained only to drive Austria 
to extreme measures. The two allies felt sure it would find support nowhere. 
William, prince regent of Prussia, had promised his neutrality. The 
czar would, if need be, hold the Germanic Confederation in restraint 
and, in any case, effect a menacing concentration on the Galician frontier. 
As for England, judging sanely of the results which the enfranchisement 
of Italy would have for France, it was not anxious to offer any serious 
impediment. On January i, 1859, Napoleon, when receiving the ambas- 
sadors, said to Austria's representative. Baron von Huebner: "I regret 
that our relations with your government are not as cordial as in the past. 
I beg of you to tell the emperor that my personal feelings for him have 
not changed." The emotion caused by these significant words was aggra- 
vated by the speech delivered on January 10 by Victor Emmanuel, declaring 
to his parliament that he " could not remain insensible to the wail of suffering 
that was coming to him from so many parts of Italy." Then it was Prince 
Napoleon's marriage with Princess Clotilda that gave occasion at Turin 
to most demonstrative manifestations. Cavour, having obtained from 
the French government the secret treaty of January 31, introduced into 
the Sardinian parliament a loan bill of fifty millions. A national sub- 
scription had also been opened for the armament of Alessandria. Austria, 
thus threatened, concentrated several army corps in the Milanese. Eng- 
land, fearing for a moment lest France might gain by a war, proposed 
a mediation which, with the czar's aid, Napoleon III made fail. During 



The Age of Napoleon the Little 579 

this time Cavour was multiplying provocations. Francis Joseph and 
his minister Buol walked into the snare and, very erroneously feeling 
sure they would be followed by the German States, sent Baron von Kellers- 
berg to Turin bearing notice to Piedmont to disarm within three days 
(April 23). On Cavour's refusing, war was at once begun (April 27). 

Italian Campaign — ^ Magenta and Solferino. — The Austrians made 
the twofold mistake of losing time and of believing the French were losing 
it. The latter, concentrated for the first time by railroad, entered Pied- 
mont on May 6. Other troops landed at Genoa to concentrate at Alessan- 
dria. The total effective force was 117,000 men, with three hundred and 
twelve guns. The Sardinian army, in round figures, amounted to sixty 
thousand men. The Austrian commander-in-chief, Giulay, disposing 
from the beginning of a hundred thousand men massed on the Ticino, 
did not know exactly whether he would march on Turin or move to the 
right bank of the Po. It followed that after fifteen days' manoeuvring 
he brought back his troops, fatigued and demoralized, to their former 
positions (May 13). The Franco-Sardinian army had used this time 
in gaining positions on the Casale, Valenza and Voghera line, with head- 
quarters at Alessandria. The Austrian commander thought it would 
try to turn his position by way of Piacenza. A reconnoissance, awk- 
wardly led by his lieutenant Stadion, who was beaten by Forey at Monte- 
bello (May 20), confirmed him in this opinion. On the contrary, on 
May 20, Napoleon threw all his troops north of the Po so as to force the 
Austrians on their right. On the 30th Cialdini's division drove the Aus- 
trians from Palestro. With the aid of the Zouaves it repelled them thence 
next day. Then Giulay retreated to the Ticino, which the French crossed 
(June 2) after combats at Turbigo. On the 4th fifty thousand French 
attacked sixty-two thousand Austrians at Magenta. The arrival of Gen- 
eral MacMahon changed the odds and compelled the enemy to retreat. 
MacMahon became a marshal and duke of Magenta. Giulay hurriedly 
evacuated Milan and withdrew to the Mincio. The victors entered 
Milan in triumph (June 8). On the same day the French beat an Austrian 
rear-guard at Melegnano. On June 17 the emperor of Austria super- 
seded his unlucky general. After having momentarily withdrav^oi behind 
the Mincio, on the 23d the Austrians reoccupied the Solferino positions 
near Lake Garda. There on the 24th a great battle was fought which 
lasted from early morning until five in the afternoon, when, under cover 
of a violent storm, the Austrians recrossed the Mincio unmolested. They 
had lost twenty-two thousand men, five thousand more than their adver- 
saries. 



580 The Age of Napoleon the Little 

The Treaty of Villafranca. — Like Magenta, Solferino was a victory 
due much more to the soldiers' courage than to the talent of their leaders. 
Throughout the whole campaign, indeed, there had been very many errors 
/that might have cost a great deal in the presence of abler adversaries. 
Napoleon III, who was weak, but not unintelligent, acknowledged them. 
He lacked courage to impose the remedies. He had spoken of freeing 
Italy as far as the Adriatic. Tuscany, Parma, Modena and Bologna 
had already risen and driven out their governments. With Kossuth's 
aid the emperor had brought Palmerston back to power and was preparing 
an insurrection in Hungary. The czar, in a note dated May 27, had 
threatened with intervention the German States that spoke of aiding 
Austria. But Alexander II did not want a Hungarian insurrection. On 
the other hand, William, regent of Prussia, had mobilized his troops and 
was trying to take advantage of Austria's embarrassments so as to secure 
the chief command of the Confederation's armies. Napoleon III and 
Francis Joseph became equally frightened at this step. The French 
army had just crossed the Mincio and invested Peschiera when the armis- 
tice of July 8 was signed. Four days later it was followed by the Villa- 
franca preliminaries. Austria ceded the Milanese to France, which 
turned it over to Sardinia. It retained Venetia as far as the Mincio and 
even a little beyond. An Italian confederation, presided over by the 
Pope, would comprise all the States of the peninsula, including the Aus- 
trian province. The dispossessed sovereigns would return to their States, 
on condition of granting an amnesty and a constitution. The treaty of 
Zurich (November 10) confirmed these arrangements while awaiting a 
European congress that never convened, for already the stipulations of 
July 12 had lost all value. 

Other Annexations to Piedmont. — Cavour, alleging that the treaty 
of Villafranca was a betrayal, had resigned the very next day. But he 
was really still directing the Italian revolution and his king's policy. Eng- 
land was giving all the aid it could to the promoters of unity; Napoleon, 
while making himself almost ridiculous by advising moderation while 
not daring to enforce it, was reduced to letting matters take their course. 
The provinces of Tuscany, Romagna and Emilia, consulted by the pro- 
visional governments of Florence, Bologna and Modena, in August voted 
their annexation to Piedmont. In September they gave themselves a 
common government, and in March, i860, voted their annexation for 
the second time. Napoleon III yielded, but demanded Nice and Savoy, 
which had been promised at Plombieres. Cavour, who had returned 
to power in January, abandoned them by the treaty of Turin (March 24). 



The Age of Napoleon the Little 581 

By a plebiscite the populations ratified their change of nationality. Eng- 
land, though there was no real danger to it in this slight increase of territory 
wanted to make France cede to Switzerland the neutralized regions of 
the Chablais and Faucigny; but its protests were unavailing. The new 
Italian State ended at the southern boundary of Tuscany and the Romagna, 
but there was no doubt that it would soon comprise all the rest of the 
country. By his imprudent and weak policy the French emperor had 
made it impossible for him to prevent anything. He was at one and the 
same time paralyzed by his past and by England's action, while Austria, 
on its part, embarrassed by its isolation and internal difficulties, dared 
not interfere. Cavour, then, had an easy game to play. The kingdom 
of Naples was governed by Francis II, who had continued his father's 
system. On April 5, i860, a revolt broke out in Sicily. In May Gari- 
baldi, with a body of between two and three thousand men he had organized 
at Genoa, professedly without the government's knowledge, landed at 
Marsala (May 12). Ere long the whole island was in his power. On 
August 2 he captured Reggio and then marched on Naples. Francis II, 
betrayed by most of his servants and menaced with an insurrection in 
his capital, fled on September 6. Next day Garibaldi entered Naples. 
Cavour resolved to intervene at once on the pretext of preventing revolution 
and restoring order. But for that it was necessary to invade the Papal 
States. Napoleon III was consulted and answered: "Do so, but do it 
quickly." Immediately the Piedmontese minister asked Pius IX's govern- 
ment to disband its small army of volunteers, consisting mostly of French 
and Irish Catholics, under the command of Lamoriciere. Havmg but 
eight against forty thousand men, on September 18 he was crushed by 
Cialdini at Castelfidarde and soon obliged to capitulate at Ancona. Thus 
did the Pope lose the Marches and Umbria. The French army's presence 
in Rome obliged the Italian troops to respect the rest of the Papal territory. 
Then Cialdini's army passed into the kingdom of Naples, where Francis II 
was still holding out. Garibaldi had won a victory on the Volturno, and 
on November 7 escorted Victor Emmanuel into Naples. A plebiscite 
with only ten thousand negative votes had already declared in favor of 
annexing the Two Sicilies. Gaeta and Messina had to surrender in 1861, 
and the dispossessed King withdrew to Rome. A few bands were still 
holding out in the mountains; but they were rapidly reduced, and their 
last leader, a Spaniard name Borges, was shot. 

The Union of Italy Completed. — ^The kingdom of Italy now existed 
in fact. On March 17, 1861, it was proclaimed at Turin by a parliament 
containing deputies from all the provinces. Russia and Prussia had 



582 The Age of Napoleon the Little 

protested against the conquest of the Two Sicilies, and Cavour had 
made answer to the Prussian envoy that he derived consolation from think- 
ing that ere long Prussia would follow Piedmont's example. Opposition 
did not last, and the new kingdom was recognized by all the powers. 
Cavour did not long survive — he died suddenly on June 6, 1861. Five 
years later his foresight was realized, and Victor Emmanuel, in spite of 
defeats at Custozza and Lissa, acquired Venetia in consequence of the 
victory of Prussia, with which he had become allied. "Italy is made." 
Victor Emmanuel said the day Venetia was annexed, "but is not com- 
pleted." The presence of French troops in Rome in fact defended what 
remained to the Pope of his former domains. Pius IX, in spite of every 
effort to persuade him, refused to recognize the new condition of affairs 
and especially to lend his aid to arrangements that would have robbed 
him of what he still kept. In 1862 Garibaldi landed at Catania and thence 
crossed over to Calabria with the object of marching on Rome. But 
Cialdini at once drove him back into Aspromonte, where he was wounded 
and captured (August 29). He withdrew to Caprera. A treaty between 
the French and Italian governments (September 15, 1864) stipulated 
that the latter would transfer its capital to Florence and respect the Roman 
territory, which France would evacuate within two years. This clause 
was carried out on December 4, 1866; but almost immediately Garibaldi 
tried a fresh invasion of the Papal territory (October, 1867). Pius IX's 
little army (about ten thousand men, mostly Frenchmen, Belgians and 
Irishmen) would not have sufficed to stop him, and the French troops 
again intervened. Defeated at Mentana, Garibaldi was compelled to 
abandon his project. 

But it was only a postponement. When Rouher declared in the 
French legislature that Italy would never have Rome, General Menabrea 
answered that Rome was as indispensable to Italy as Paris was to France. 
The war of 1870 compelled Napoleon III to recall his troops (July 28). 
After Sedan Victor Emmanuel ordered the Papal territory to be invaded 
(September 8). Rome was occupied on the 20th, after a brief resistance 
which Pius IX had ordered only from principle. The law known as that 
of guarantees (May 2, 1871) left to the Pope, with the personal rights 
of a sovereign, the enjoyment of three palaces, including the Vatican, 
and an income of three and a quarter million francs; but Pius IX and 
his successors have so far refused to accept these conditions. Early in 
1878 Victor Emmanuel and Pius IX died within about a month of each 
other. The Roman question none the less still remains open. Nor 
has the conquest of Rome satisfied Italian ambition. Those called the 
Irredentists (from Italia irredenta, unredeemed Italy) claim for their 



The Age of Napoleon the Little 583 

country Corsica, Nice, Ticino, Trent, Trieste and Malta. Officially the 
government disapproves of these covetings of territory. It has none the 
less aimed at extension, and in 1882 united with Germany and Austria 
in what has ever since been known as the Triple Alliance. In spite of 
the efforts of the warlike minister Crispi, this alliance has brought no 
result. England and Germany themselves favored France's occupation 
of Tunis (188 1), a country which the Italians claimed under the pretext 
that Rome, whose heirs they believe they are, had possessed it of old. 
An expedition in Abyssinia ended only in disaster (March, 1896). Since 
then the Italian government has apparently confined itself to its internal 
affairs, but from time to time has cast a longing eye sometimes onTripoli 
and sometimes on Albania. 



CHAPTER XXXV 



Formation of German Unity 



Germany and Prussia after 1848. — The effort made in 1848 to 
unify Germany had failed for two reasons — first, because its promoters had 
not sufficiently clear and precise ideas, and, secondly, because they lacked 
material strength. Until 1859 reaction against novelties and their advocates 
dominated in Germany and even Prussia as well as in Austria. The Italian 
war, as was easily foreseen, and as wary counselers had told Napoleon III, 
revived the Unitarian agitation beyond the Rhine. Since September 16, 
1859, it had its centre in the national circle of Frankfort and its manifesto 
in the proclamation which it issued on September 4, i860, a proclamation 
whose terms, though in moderate forms, clearly announced the design of ex- 
cluding Austria from Germany. It was the object of those favoring unity, 
but with more decision than in 1848, to place the collection of the German 
States under Prussia's direction. The accession of a new king, WilHam I, 
who was already in advance called William the Conqueror, was going to 
bring this project to a successful issue. The future German emperor's 
predecessor, Frederick William IV, with the same ambition as his brother, 
had too many prejudices and too much confusion in his mind to be capable of 
realizing it. Becoming insane towards the close of 1857, he had to leave the 
government to William, who, officially regent after October 7, 1858, became 
king on January 2, 1861. 

The new sovereign was almost sixty-four years old. The son of Freder- 
ick William III and Queen Louisa, while yet a child he had witnessed the 
disasters of his country and his home, and then as a young man had had 
his first experience of arms towards the close of the Napoleonic wars. 
Obliged to flee during the revolt of 1848, he had afterwards, by his pro- 
English attitude at the time of the Crimean war, won the sympathies of the 
Liberals, who joyfully acclaimed his accession. To lower him to the rank of 
a party leader was to judge him erroneously. William I was above all a 
Prussian prince, serious, industrious, and penetrated with a sense of his 
duties to the State, the first of which, according to the men of his house, 
has ever been to aggrandize it; and he was also imbued with the idea that 
684 



Formation of German Unity 585 

the State was essentially incarnate in him. "I am the first king," he said 
at his coronation, "to assume power since the throne has been surrounded 
with modern institutions, but I do not forget that the crown comes from 
God. " He had none of the higher talents that mark great men but he poss- 
essed the two essential quaUties of the head of a State — firmness and judg- 
ment. He showed this by the way in which he chose and supported those 
who built up his greatness, and this merit is rarer than is generally supposed. 
A soldier above all, he saw that Prussia's ambitions could be realized only 
with a powerful army. Advised by Von Moltke, the army's chief of staflf 
since 1858, and Von Roon, the great administrator, who filled the office of 
minister of war, he changed the organization of 18 14, which had become 
insufficient. Instead of brigades formed in war time half of men in active 
service and half of reserves, there were regiments recruited by a three 
(instead of a two) years' service and reinforced in case of need by the two 
following classes (reserved). The landwehr, divided into two classes 
(twenty-five to thirty-two years and thirty-two to thirty-nine), was grouped 
separately. This system gave seven hundred thousand trained soldiers, — 
Prussia had seventeen million inhabitants, — or more than either France or 
Austria had. The armament was also superior. Frederick William I had 
already said that the first result to be obtained in this direction was celerity 
in firing. It was assured by the Dreyse or needle gun. 

Bismarck's Rise and Character. — This transformation entailed 
heavy expenses. The Prussian Chamber, made up for the most part of 
Liberals, did not understand its utility. Moreover, it was not in favor of 
increasing the number of officers, because they were recruited from the 
nobility. After having yielded with bad grace in i860, the deputies refused 
the grants in 1861 and 1862. It was then Bismarck was called to the 
ministry (September 24, 1862). Otto von Bismarck-Schcenhausen, born 
April I, 1815, belonged by birth to that minor Prussian nobility, rough and 
realistic, but faithful and disciplined, which has ever been one of the Pruss- 
ian State's sources of strength. After irregular studies at the university of 
Gcettingen, he had entered the administration, but had not been able to stay 
in it, and had lived on his estates, rather moderate too, until 1847. The diet 
of that year, to which he had been elected, brought him into prominence. 
There he distinguished himself in the Junker (poor country squires') party 
by his marked contempt for the Liberalism then in vogue and his insolence 
to the Liberals. Frederick William IV entrusted him with representing 
Prussia at Frankfort, where he assumed the same attitude towards the 
Austrians (185 1-9). After that he was ambassador at St. Petersburg, and 
had just been sent to Paris when he became minister. His character was, 



586 Formation of German Unity 

in more striking forms, that of his country. Whence arose his taste for 
sarcastic raillery and for a sort of frankness, apparently brutal, but really 
more refined than lying itself. His qualities were those of all great poli- 
ticians — energy, decision and realism, that is, talent for appreciating all 
things at their effective value and for not letting himself be duped either by 
appearances, or by current theories, or by words. The affair of the duchies 
showed at once the worth of the Prussian council's new president. 

The Affair of the Duchies. — Very unfavorably received by the parlia- 
ment, he paid httle heed to the furious opposition of the deputies, causing to 
be promulgated by ordinance the budget which they refused him, suppress- 
ing hostile nevv^spapers, treating his adversaries with studied insolence and 
declaring to them that, if the Chamber had its rights, the king also had his, 
and that force settled the matter in such a case. So as to get rid of these 
barren struggles, he took advantage of the first incident of foreign poUtics. 
The Schleswi^-Holstein question furnished him with the desired oppor- 
tunity. The treaty of London (May 8, 1852), concluded after the first war, 
had maintained the union of Holstein with Denmark, but did not put a 
definite end to the demands of the Germans. Accordingly the quarrel 
had been renewed in 1855 over a common constitution given by King Freder- 
ick VII to all his States. After two years' discussion he had to abolish 
it (1858). Then the Danes undertook to grant complete autonomy to the 
duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg, but for the purpose of more completely 
uniting Schleswig with their country (March 30, 1863). The diet again 
protested. In all that there was food for an indefinite contest, for, on the 
one hand, Schleswig did not form a part of the Confederation, but, on the 
other, certain historical bonds attached it to Holstein, and its population 
was mixed. The death of Frederick VII (November 15, 1863), succeeded 
by a distant relative. Christian IX, further complicated the quarrel. The 
duke of Augustenburg claimed the three duchies, though he had previously 
renounced them. The German diet, on its part, wanted the Danish con- 
stitution abolished in Schleswig. Not obtaining this, it ordered federal 
execution in Holstein. 

The dream of the petty German States, hostile to Prussia, and especially 
of the Saxon minister. Von Beust, was to strengthen their party by the 
creating of a new duchy. Bismarck admirably outplayed everybody. He 
knew that the great powers were at odds with one another over Poland. He, 
on the contrary, could count on Russia's friendship and the personal aid of 
Queen Victoria, whom Prince Albert had completely won over to pro- 
German ideas. He used England to make Christian IX consent to the oc- 
cupation of Holstein, which, he said, was in reality an acknowledgment of 



Formation of German Unity 587 

that king's rights (December, 1863). Then, when Saxon and Hano- 
verian troops had proceeded to carry it out, Prussia, dragging with it 
Austria, which did not wish to appear less German than it, invaded 
Schleswig, so as, it said, to hold it as a pledge. Christian IX tried to 
resist (February, 1864), but the Danewerk and the Schlei were forced, 
and the Danish army was defeated at Flensburg and driven back into 
Dueppel, which was taken by assault (April 18). A conference of the 
great powers opened at London (April 25-June 25) brought about no 
result. Napoleon III did not refuse to act, but he wanted as a condition 
that England would promise him something more than its moral support, 
which it refused to do. Finally Jutland was invaded and conquered, 
and Von Moltke was already preparing for a landing in Fuenen when 
Christian IX gave up all the duchies by the Vienna preliminaries (August 
i), confirmed by treaty on October 30 following. 

Napoleon III Outwitted by Bismarck. — The fate of the conquest 
remained to be settled. Bismarck declared at first (February 22, 1865) 
that he would recognize the duke of Augustenburg only if the latter 
placed himself under the military authority of Prussia. Besides, his 
scrupulous conscience had doubts about the worth of the pretender's 
rights. To get light on them, he consulted the crown lawyers. After 
long investigations they declared that in fact King Christian's rights were 
far superior. From this Bismarck concluded that, since Christian's 
rights were such, Prussia and Austria, having acquired them by conquest, 
were thereafter the lawful owners of the duchies. The secondary States 
protested. He paid no attention to them. Austria, hampered by internal 
embarrassments and by Italy's attitude, consented to sign the Gastein 
agreement (August 14, 1865). Austria would have Holstein and Prussia 
Schleswig, plus the right to occupy Kiel and Rendsburg. Lauenburg 
was besides, sold to it for two and a half million thalers. The arrange- 
ment, moreover, was but provisional. It was so in fact. Bismarck 
wanted war, because it was the only practical means of excluding Austria 
from Germany. In 1865 ^^ ^^i^ that a single battle in Bohemia would 
decide everything and that Prussia would win that battle. Yet, in order 
to be quite sure, he needed the neutrality of France — that of Russia he 
had undoubtedly acquired. Not only, in fact, could Napoleon III act 
through his own means, but it also depended on him to hold Italy in check. 
Bismarck went to see the French emperor at Biarritz (October, 1865). 
The latter, ever mastered by his Italian sympathies, had just, but unsuc- 
cessfully, proposed to Austria to sell Venetia. When Bismarck offered 
to him an alliance with a view to the extension of Prussia and Italy, by 



588 Formation of German Unity 

means of which France would take Belgium, Napoleon III saw very 
clearly that the offer was chimerical. But he believed that Prussia alone 
would be rapidly crushed a-nd that the alliance of Italy would aid him 
exactly in protracting the war, which would enable him to intervene as a 
peacemaker and to impose a vast rearrangement of territory, the most 
essential provision of which would be the exchange of Venetia for Silesia. 

Rupture between Austria and Prussia. — Bismarck, then returned 
with the certainty that nothing on France's part would stop him. There 
was nothing left for him to do but to drive Austria to the wall as soon as 
possible. The Holstein question and the far more serious one of reform- 
ing the federal government served him to that end. On January 24, 
1866, he reproached the Austrian government with favoring in Holstein 
the pretensions of the duke of Augustenburg. The grievance soon became 
envenomed by complaints and ulterior measures. In April Bismarck 
denounced the so called offensive measures which Austria was taking 
in Bohemia and which, in short, were only precautionary. It was the 
moment when he himself was signing with Italy a treaty, concluded for 
three months, by virtue of which Victor Emmanuel was to declare war 
against Austria as soon as Prussia itself had done so. Venetia and a 
hundred and twenty millions of subsidies were promised to it (treaty of 
Berlin, April 8, 1866). Next day Bismarck, invited to lay the Austrlo- 
Prussian dispute before the diet, answered by asking that an assembly 
elected by universal suffrage be called to discuss the question of federal 
reform. Then Austria offered to disarm in Bohemia if Prussia would 
do so on its part. Bismarck demanded, besides, disarmament in Venetia, 
a condition he knew to be unacceptable. Then, on May 7? he declared 
he would not accept the diet's intervention in the duchies question, and 
on the 8th ordered the mobilization of the Prussian army. Napoleon 
III then proposed the holding of a congress for settling the duchies ques- 
tion and that of federal reform. Thiers had warned him in vain, in an 
admirable speech delivered on May 3, that France had everything to lose 
by aiding in bringing about the unity of Germany. The emperor per- 
sisted in his blind obstinacy to want to tear up those treaties of 18 15 which, 
two years before, he had childishly declared to be no longer in existence. 
The congress proposal failed through the refusal of Austria and the petty 
States (June 7). Napoleon III let matters pass while signing with Austria 
a secret treaty by which the latter promised to cede Venetia after its first 
victory and on condition of being indemnified at Prussia's expense. By 
a strange inconsistency the French emperor proposed at the same time 
to make Prussia more homogeneous in the north. 



i 



Formation of German Unity 589 

The War of 1866 in Germany. — Bismarck acted in a far clearer 
manner. On June 5, General von Gablenz, Austrian governor of Hol- 
stein, convened the States of that country; then, though Austria declared 
that the object of this measure was to enable the federal diet to settle the 
question. General ManteufFel invaded the duchy and, having far superior 
forces at his disposal, seized it at once. On the loth Prussia asked the 
different German States to accept a new constitution based on the exclu- 
sion of Austria, the election of a parliament by universal suffrage, the 
creation of a strong federal power and a common army. The diet 
answered by voting the federal execution against Prussia. Thereupon 
the Prussian envoy, Savigny, withdrew, declaring that his sovereign ceased 
to recognize the Confederation. 

Events proved how correctly Bismarck had judged by having con- 
fidence in Prussia's military strength. He had so much the more merit 
in daring as the war was by no means popular there. The Prussian 
forces amounted to three hundred and thirty thousand men, who were 
to be aided in the south by two hundred and forty thousand Italians. 
Austria had three hundred and thirty-five thousand troops and its German 
allies one hundred and forty-six thousand. Generally the last named 
had little zeal. The Austrian government acted slowly, while its adver- 
sary vigorously assumed the offensive. On June 16, after an unavailing 
notice, the Prussian troops invaded Saxony and occupied it without resist- 
ance. The Saxon army withdrew to Bohemia. Thfc same was the case 
in electoral Hesse, whose grand duke was taken prisoner, while his army 
went and joined the Bavarians. Still less fortunate, the king of Hanover 
did not even save his army, which, also retreating towards the south, was 
surrounded and obliged to capitulate at Langensalza (June 29). In the 
south the Prussian general Vogel von Falkenstein, who had but fifty-seven 
thousand men against over a hundred thousand, took advantage of the 
fact that his adversaries had separated into two masses, the one at Frank- 
fort and the other at Meiningen, to beat them separately, the Bavarians 
at Kissingen (July 10) and the prince of Hesse, commanding the other 
army, at Aschaffenburg (July 14). On the i6th the Prussians entered 
Frankfort, which they overwhelmed with requisitions and contributions. 
General Manteuffel, Falkenstein's successor, then drove the federal armies 
from the line of the Tauber, where they had united, back to Wuerzburg 
(battles of Werbach and Tauber-Bischoffsheim, July 24). On the 28th 
an armistice was concluded. 

The War in Venetia and the Adriatic. — ^The Italians had been 
less successful. Archduke Albert, who commanded in Venetia, had 



590 Formation of German Unity 

only seventy thousand men, but they were Croatian Slavs, that is, Austria's 
best troops. Confronting him, Victor Emmanuel commanded one 
hundred and twenty-four thousand men on the Chiese and Cialdini eighty 
thousand in the neighborhood of Ferrara. They could not succeed in 
acting together. Cialdini let himself be kept in check by a mere handful 
of troops while the archduke attacked the Italian royal army at Custozza 
(June 24). Serious errors in tactics and panic in an Italian brigade, 
which fled before three platoons of lancers that had the audacity to charge 
it, gave victory to the Austrians. Cialdini had remained behind the Po. 
Garibaldi, who had taken it upon himself, with thirty-six thousand men, 
to conquer the Trent region, defended only by thirteen thousand regulars 
and four thousand militia under General von Kuhn, was not only repulsed 
in every attack, but, were it not for the evacuation of Venetia, his adver- 
sary would have pursued him on Italian territory. On sea, fortune was 
no more favorable to Italy. Yet it had a fine armor-plated fleet to fight 
Austria's old wooden vessels. But Admiral Persano began by delaymg 
at Ancona, and then, obliged by public protest to try something, he 
steered for the Dalmatian island of Lissa. It was there that, on June 
20, Admiral Tegethoff attacked him with his old ships, and, owing to 
his adversary's complete incapacity, won an unexpected victory. He 
himself, with his wooden vessel, had the audacity to approach the hostile 
admiral's ironclad, the Red Italia, and sank it. Persano was on another 
vessel. The Palestr®, catching fire, blew up with its equipage, and the 
Italian fleet returned to Ancona in very bad condition. 

Campaign in Bohemia — Sadowa. — It was not on these events 
that the outcome of the war was to depend, but on the victory or defeat 
of the chief Austrian army. The forces on the Silesian and Saxon frontier 
were almost equal; but the Austrian commander-in-chief, Benedek, a 
brave and brilliant division leader, was not equal to his present task. 
He dallied in Moravia until June 16, while the Prussians entered Bohemia 
in two separate masses, one on each side of the Riesen Gebirge. Prince 
Frederick Charles traversed the Lausitz mountains and the Prince Royal 
those of Erlitz. Benedek wavered and blundered. He sent only sixty 
thousand men against one hundred and fifty thousand under Frederick 
Charles, and they suffered four defeats in as many days (June 26-29). 
At the same time he had made the same mistake in regard to the Prince 
Royal, who won in over half a dozen skirmishes. During the night of 
June 29-30 the second Prussian army arrived on the Elbe and soon joined 
the first. Benedek now completely lost his head on July i, telegraphed 
to the emperor to make peace at any cost, and retreated on Olmuetz. 



Formation of German Unity 591 

Again he changed his mind and decided to fight, while he threw the blame 
for his own errors on his subordinates. Though his army was completely 
demoralized, yet it fought with great bravery (July 3) on the battlefield 
which he had chosen near the village of Sadowa. The Austrians, whom 
their general had notified of the imminent battle only in- the middle of 
the night, had fortified the slopes and villages as best they could. At 
eight in the morning Frederick Charles began the attack by crossing the 
Bistritz. Benedek's centre resisted, but the right and left wings lost 
ground. At half past eleven the Prussians were thinking of retreating 
when the Prince Royal appeared coming from the north. The second 
and sixth Austrian corps, obliged to confront him with a flank march 
under the fire of the Prussian artillery, could not hold out long, and about 
three o'clock the strongest Austrian position was lost. It was necessary 
at any cost to regain it, but all efforts failed against their own intrench- 
ments defended with desperate energy. At half past four retreat became 
necessary. Half of the Austrian army escaped without much difficulty, 
but the rest, three army corps, driven towards the Elbe by the whole vic- 
torious army, would have been annihilated but for the devotedness of the 
cavalry and the artillerymen, who, forming successive fire lines, and con- 
tinuing to shoot until the muzzles of their guns were reached, at last fell 
dead at their posts, but they had saved the infantry from destruction. 
It was none the less a frightful rout, which cost the vanquished forty 
thousand men and one hundred and eighty-seven pieces of artillery. The 
Prussians lost only ten thousand dead and wounded. Benedek was able 
to reform his troops only near Olmuetz. 

The Treaty of Prague. — ^The Austrians tried to fall back on Vienna, 
but only three corps out of eight reached there, as the Prussian army by 
a rapid march had forced the others to seek refuge at Presburg. On 
July 18, the Prussian armies were concentrated on the Russbach. Arch- 
duke Albert, recalled from Italy, had taken command of the troops cov- 
ering Vienna, but the internal condition of the empire, where Hungary 
was in agitation, was too disquieting for it to be possible, without aid, to 
continue the war. This aid Napoleon III could and should have fur- 
nished. The French army had suffered from the expedition to Mexico. 
Yet it would have been possible to put a hundred thousand men on foot 
immediately, and later on, Bismarck acknowledged that that would have 
sufficed to change the result. But Napoleon III was ill, uncertain 
because of his mania for nationalities, and swayed between opposing 
influences. Prince Napoleon, whom he heeded very much, was decidedly 
in favor of Prussia. Accordingly, no step was taken but an offer of 



592 Formation of German Unity 

mediation (July 5), which he made definite only on the 14th. Then he 
had the weakness, in spite of his minister Drouyn de Lhuys, to consent 
to the annexations which Prussia wished to bring about in northern Ger- 
many. He asked, however, that Austria lose only Venetia, but it was 
precisely Bismarck's will that had, and not without difficulty, persuaded 
King William that he must not, by territorial demands, compromise the 
alliance which he afterwards realized. 

On July 26 the preliminaries of Nikolsburg were signed. Austria 
paid twenty-five thalers, abandoned its former position in Germany, 
acknowledged the extension of Prussian authority to the line of the Main 
and the annexations which Prussia would deem it to its purpose to make. 
The three Danish duchies were likewise abandoned. It was stipulated 
only that the inhabitants of northern Schleswig would be consulted as 
to their wish to be restored or not to Denmark, which was never done. 
The definitive treaty was signed on August 25 at Prague. As for Italy, 
Francis Joseph had ceded Venetia to Napoleon III, who was to transmit 
it to Victor Emmanuel, but the Italians protested loudly against the idea 
of being satisfied with so little. They also wanted at least the Trent 
country. "Have you, then," Bismarck said to them, "lost another battle 
to claim a province more.f"' On August lo the preliminaries of peace 
were signed on that side. The final treaty, that of Vienna, is dated 
October 3. 

Germany and Austria after 1866. — Prussia, now master of Ger- 
many, annexed Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau and the city of Frank- 
fort, which increased its population by four and a half millions. The 
rest of the northern States as far as the Main were to form under its direc- 
tion the Confederation of Northern Germany (proclaimed July i, 1867). 
Its constitution was exactly the same as that of the German empire of 
to-day. As for the southern States, they remained independent, but 
signed military agreements which connected them with Prussia. Napo- 
leon III tried in vain to obtain a compensation for that enormous increase 
of power. To the first overtures which he made to this end (he wanted 
the Palatinate) Bismarck answered with a flat refusal and a threat of 
war, while adding that he would consent to an enlargement of France 
from Belgium, a project which he was afterwards careful to mention as 
coming from the Paris cabinet, which annoyed England. 

As regards Austria, its defeat no longer permitted the maintenance 
of the centralist system. The Prussians had tried to bring about rebellion 
in Bohemia, and they would certainly, with General Klapka's aid, have 
soon succeeded in provoking a revolt in Hungary. The natural solution 



Formation of German Unity 593 

would have been federalism. But the Saxon Von Beust, called from 
Dresden and invested w^ith the ministry of foreign affairs, wanted to come 
to an understanding only with the Hungarians. "Keep your hordes," 
he said to them, "and we will keep ours." These were the Slavs and 
the Rumanians. The Ausgleich (bilateral contract) of June 28, 1867, 
made Hungary a parliamentary kingdom, in which only the Magyars, 
however, have serious rights, while the Rumanians and the Slovaks 
are reduced to veritable political serfdom. Only the Croatians, whom 
it would have been dangerous to drive to extremes, obtained for their 
countries an Ausgleich with the kingdom of Hungary. After the act of 
June 28 the latter had relations only with the constitutional countries. 
It was necessary, therefore, to create a parliamentary government for the 
rest of the monarchy, the Cisleithan part, as it was called, from the name 
of a small affluent of the Danube, the Leytha, which for some miles separ- 
ates Austria from Hungary. But there also the Slavs were sacrificed 
to the Germans. In vain did Bohemia demand its historical rights. Its 
deputies abstained even from appearing in the Vienna Reichstag. The 
Hohenwart ministry (federalist), which had tried to give it satisfaction, 
was obliged to retire in November, 1871. Quite recently again the Viennese 
government, after having for a time established equality in Bohemia, 
between the two tongues, has receded before the violent opposition of the 
Germans. Austria is, in short, a State in two parts, in which two com- 
pact minorities govern the majority. The common parliamentary organ 
is the delegations, which, made up of an equal number of Hungarian and 
Austrian deputies sent by their respective parliaments, assemble at Vienna 
or Buda-Pesth to vote the common expenses. 

Germany and France from 1866 until 1870. — Prussia, as we have 
seen, had concluded military agreements with the States of southern Ger- 
many. It held them also in another manner, namely, by means of the 
Zollverein, signed anew on June 4, 1867. But it was far from bringing 
about a peaceful realization of unity. The southern States, not merely 
the sovereigns only, but the peoples, have always had little taste for Prus- 
sian leadership, and after 1866 this feeling was very visible. It was for 
that reason that Bismarck had need of a war against France. Union 
against the foreigner was to complete political unity. War came near 
breaking out in 1867 in relation to Luxemburg. Napoleon III keenly 
desired to have at least that compensation for Prussia's aggrandizements, 
and the king of Holland was disposed to cede his rights for ninety millions. 
But Bismarck, after having secretly approved of the bargain, officially 
declared his opposition to it (April 3, 1867). Napoleon, hampered at 

38 



594 Formation of German Unity 

one and the same time by the Paris exposition of that year and by the 
bad condition of his army, was too happy to escape from embarrassment 
(for the Prussians did not wish to evacuate the fortress of Luxemburg) 
by obtaining with the aid of the other powers that the little duchy be 
declared neutral and the walls of its capital destroyed (treaty of London, 
May II, 1867). 

In spite of this arrangement, it remained certain to everybody that 
a conflict would break out in a short time between France and Prussia. 
We have seen what reasons Bismarck had for going ahead. Napoleon 
Ill's government, justly censured by opinion for the weakness which it 
had shown in 1866 and constantly losing, its authority was to fall on that 
account into the first trap its adversary would set for it. The same weakness 
prevented it from adopting the indispensable military measures, as it 
should have done. The enemies of power were declaiming against stand- 
ing armies, which they declared useless. The government deputies were 
afraid to dissatisfy their constituents by aggravating the burdens of the 
service. Yet Marshal Niel, minister of war (January, 1867), tried to 
adopt measures with a view to the inevitable war. He caused to be 
elaborated a plan of campaign, a plan of transports by railway, the chief 
places of the East to be armed with rifled cannon, but insufficiently, more- 
over. But the Chamber grudged him the appropriations for the increase 
of the army, asking him if "he wished to make France a vast barracks." 
"Take care," he answered the opposition, "lest you make it a vast ceme- 
tery." Accordingly, when the mobile national guard had been created, 
made up of all the young men who had not been drawn by lot, organiza- 
tion was given to it only on paper, and it was never drilled. Leboeuf, 
who succeeded Niel in August, 1869, abandoned, moreover, most of his 
predecessor's plans. It had even been neglected to do anything towards 
-carrying out on the eastern frontier any of the works already recommended 
as urgent by the generals of the Restoration. 

Spain Furnishes a Pretext for War. — ^To play a part, of whose 
danger the emperor, less ignorant than those around him, was sufficiently 
well aware, the alliance of Austria and Italy was necessary. After having 
tried unsuccessfully to revive the northern Schleswig question, the French 
government entered upon negotiations with those of Vienna and Florence. 
But everything remained in the state of a vague outline, especially on 
the part of Italy, which asked above all that Rome be abandoned. Bis- 
marck knew very well that Italy would do nothing and that Austria, if 
need be, would be kept in check by Russia. Accordingly, in 1867, there 
was nothing to prevent him from proclaiming that unity would be brought 
about as soon as the southern States desired. 



Formation of German Unity 59 5 

In 1869 he had found and as it were put In reserve the means of rup- 
ture In 1868 Queen Isabella of Spain had been deposed by a mihtary 
revolution The victors, Marshals Prim and Serrano and Admiral 
Topete, were looking for a king, and, after having thought for a moment 
of Prince Frederick Charles, had fallen back on Prince Leopold of Hohen- 
zoUern, son of the head of the elder and Catholic branch of the family. 
Bismarck, after having dragged the matter along for a certain time gave 
orders that the prince announce his candidacy (June 28, 1870). ^ing 
William, he claimed, in granting this permission, was acting only as head 
of the family. Immediately the duke of Gramont, minister of foreign 
affairs, questioned by an opposition deputy, declared (July 6) that t ranee 
could not endure the restoration of Charles V's empire, and that, if need 
be, the government "could perform its duty without hesitation or weak- 
ness " The king of Prussia, earnestly pressed by the French ambassador, 
Benedetti, at last gave assurance of his relative's withdrawal (July 12). 
But then the French government asked him for the promise that he would 
not permit any reappearance of the candidacy. William answered to 
Benedetti that he had nothing to add to what he had already said. Ihere 
was nothing offensive in the terms of the answer, but Bismarck, to whom 
the aged king had telegraphed the incident, distorted the telegram by 
various erasures (as he has himself told) so as to give it an msultmg form. 
As the French ministry knew at the same time that Bismarck was count- 
ing, in any case, on demanding reparation, war was decided upon. On 
the 15th the government asked the Chamber for the callmg out of the 
reserves and an appropriation of fifty millions for entermg upon the cam- 
paign. There were a few protests, especially from Thiers. The majority 
hissed him. In the street the mob never ceased exclaiming: ^^io berfin! 
Ollivier declared that he accepted responsibility for the war "with a light 
heart" and Marshal Lebceuf that "everything was ready, more than ready, 
that not even a gaiter button was missing." Accordingly, though it 
was certain of not being followed by Austria, though Russia and bngland 
had again offered their good offices to it (July 16), y^t the imperial govern- 
ment declared war on the 17th. William answered by invitmg the Ger- 
mans "to fight like their fathers for their liberty and their rights against 
foreign conquerors" (July 19). 

Beginning of the Franco- Prussian War.— The Prussian army 
enlarged by all the contingents of all the other German States, including 
those of the south, was more numerous than the French army, and its 
organization had been very much improved since 1866. If the L)reyse 
gun was in every respect inferior to the Chassepot, on the other hand the 



596 Formation of German Unity 

Krupp artillery, with its breach-loading pieces, very far surpassed those 
of the French, most of which were of too weak calibre and muzzle-load- 
ing. Napoleon III, it is true, was counting on the mitrailleuse, about 
which there was at one and the same time great talk and great mystery, 
but this hope was not justified by the result. Marshal Leboeuf had not 
precisely distorted the truth when he said that everything was ready. In 
so speaking he had thought of a war after the old fashion. Scarcely had 
the work been begun when the old machine was seen to be insufficient 
and to go wrong on all sides. There existed no plan of campaign, of 
mobilization, or of railroad transportation. The army numbered five 
hundred and twenty-five thousand men on paper, with its reserves. In 
the early days of August there were gathered together, with considerable 
disorder, two hundred and seventy thousand men, forming eight army 
corps, which constituted a single army, that of the Rhine, stretched out 
all along the frontier, after the manner of a line of custom houses. Napo- 
leon III nominally held the chief command, with Leboeuf as chief of staff. 
The poor sovereign, seeing the insufficiency of his effective forces, had 
entertained the idea of reinforcing each battallion with a few hundred 
mobile guards. But the bureau raised the point that this would be a viola- 
tion of law. The Prussians had begun their mobilization on July i6, a 
day later than the French army. On the 24th the strategical transports 
had begun to follow, and on August 4 the troops were arranged on the 
frontier. The effective force rose to four hundred and twenty thousand 
men, forming three armies, the first under Steinmetz at Treves, the second 
under Frederick Charles towards Zweibruecken (Deux-Ponts) and the 
third under the Prince Royal between Speyer and Landau. 

The Fighting before Metz was Invested. — ^According to the plan 
elaborated by Von Moltke from 1868 on, based on the probable numerical 
superiority of the Prussian armies, these were to try a great turning move- 
ment around the French arrny's right wing. The latter would then be 
thrown back on Metz or on the Belgian frontier, and marching on Paris 
would become possible. On August 4 the Prince Royal's army (150,000) 
left Landau and at Wissenburg fell upon Abel Douay's division, which 
was crushed and lost its general. Immediately Marshal MacMahon, 
invested by the emperor with the command of three army corps, called 
to his aid the corps of De Failly and Felix Douay. But instead of the 
eighty thousand men he had hoped to concentrate at Woerth, on the 6th 
he had only thirty-six thousand against the Prince Royal's one hundred 
and fifty thousand. Yet he was able to hold out until evening was ap- 
proaching, and then retreated without much difficulty. In this battle of 



Formation of German Unity • 597 

Woerth or ReichshofFen he had lost six thousand killed and wounded and 
nine thousand prisoners, while the German loss was ten thousand, five 
hundred of them officers. On the same day General Frossard, who on 
August 2, with the emperor as a spectator, had captured Saarbrueck after 
a light skirmish, was defeated in the strong position of Spicheren, where 
he had only twenty-eight against seventy thousand. Bazaine had refused 
aid to him, saying: "Let the schoolmaster look out for himself," allud- 
ing to his having been military tutor to the Prince Imperial and fearing 
lest a victory might make him a marshal. The immediate consequence 
of this battle was a general retreat towards Metz, where the arrival of 
Marshal Canrobert's troops raised the army to one hundred and seventy- 
eight thousand men. The Chambers had been convened and had over- 
thrown the Ollivier ministry, which was succeeded by that of Count Pal- 
ikao. On August 13, Napoleon III gave the chief command of the Metz 
army to Bazaine, with orders to lead it to Verdun. Bazaine, selfish and 
mediocre, and conscious of his mediocrity, resolved, on the contrary, not 
to leave Metz so as to shelter himself from a defeat. The march that 
had been ordered he led so sluggishly that, already delayed on the 14th 
on the right bank of the Moselle by a skirmish at Borny, he was stopped 
next day on the left bank by a part of the German army that had crossed 
the river above Metz (battle of Rezonville). The bloody battle of Saint- 
Privat (August 18), following the still bloodier one of Gravelotte two 
days earlier, threw him into Metz, where on the 19th he found himself 
invested by seven army corps. 

The Chalons Army and Battle of Sedan. — After Woerth Mac- 
Mahon had for a moment thought of retreating on Langres, but the gov- 
ernment's orders had directed him to Chalons, where Napoleon III, fleeing 
from Metz, and occasionally insulted during his flight, arrived on August 
16. The troops collected in the Chalons camp and those led by the Marshal 
on the 20th reached the figure of 140,000. They had confronting them 
the Prince Royal's army (150,000) and that of the prince royal of Saxony 
(army of the Meuse, 90,000). MacMahon was possessed of but ordinary 
talents; yet with great good sense he came to the conclusion that in the 
actual state of affairs there was nothing to be done but retreat on Paris. 
Palikao, from political preconcern, prevailed upon him to march by the 
northern route to Bazaine's aid. To make such a movement succeed, 
other soldiers were needed, for the spirits of the troops were very low, and 
a general of the very first order was required. Accordingly the Chalons 
army, marching slowly and hesitantly, was very soon overtaken by the 
Germans, who on August 25, three days after the Marshal's decision, 



598 . Formation of German Unity 

knew what was to be done. On the 26th their cavalry caught up with 
the enemy. On the 29th they stopped the van-guard of De Failly's fifth 
corps at Nouart, and on the 30th routed it at Beaumont. MacMahon 
stopped on the right bank of the Meuse and fortified himself on the heights 
overlooking Sedan. In the battle of this name (September i) the Ger- 
mans directed every effort to drive him from this position so as to crowd 
the French into the old fortress exposed on every side. Before 7 in the 
morning MacMahon, wounded by the exploding of a bomb, had to turn 
the command over to General Ducrot, who ordered retreat on Mezieres. 
This move was perhaps still feasible, but General Wimpfen, claiming 
the succession, unenviable as it was, to the Marshal, countermanded the 
order. The Germans, masters of Bazeilles, completed the investment 
of the French army in spite of the heroic charges of the cavalry under 
General Margueritte, who was killed in the beginning of the action. With 
his troops hemmed in and crowded together on all sides, Wimpfen had 
to capitulate under the threat of a bombardment. Thirty-eight thousand 
men had been killed or captured during the action, and eighty-three thou- 
sand surrendered with three hundred and fifty pieces of artillery. The 
Prussians had lost only nine thousand men. Napoleon III, taken prisoner, 
was sent to Wilhelmshoehe castle, near Cassel. 

Revolution and Investment of Paris. — As soon as the disaster 
became known, the empire was overthrown without the slightest resistance 
(September 4) and succeeded by the Government of National Defence. 
The latter was presided over by General Trochu, governor of Paris, with 
an advisory board of eleven members, all deputies from the capital. Two 
of them, Glais-Bizoin and Cremieux, accompanied by Admiral Fourichon, 
set out for Tours with the title of delegates. The others remained in 
Paris. After Sedan the Prussians marched on Paris and came within 
sight of it on September 17. Jules Favre, of the Defence committee, 
undertook to go to Ferrieres and negotiate with Bismarck. But the latter 
demanded Strasburg and a part of Alsace, at least, and for an armistice 
more, namely, Toul, Verdun, Strasburg and Mont Valerien (the strongest 
defence of Paris). Now Favre had declared: "We will cede neither an 
inch of our territory nor a stone of our fortresses." The effort failed 
(September 20). Thiers, who had unsuccessfully traversed Europe beg- 
ging the powers to intervene, and had elicited only a polite negative wherever 
he went, on November 4 began another tour, and with no better result. 

The capital had over half a million defenders, while the besiegers 
numbered only two thousand at the end of October, and never exceeded 
two hundred and thirty-five thousand. But, with the exception of fourteen 



Formation of German Unity 599 

thousand marines occupying the forts and two regiments brought back by 
Vinoy, they formed a mass knowing nothing of military habits and not 
always disciplined. The supreme head, Trochu, was the man least capable 
of turning it to account. Imbued, as he says in his Memoirs, with pessi- 
mistic ideas on the moral condition of contemporary France, he did not 
believe in success and thought only of honorably performing his duty by 
defending the place passively. Provisionings, accumulated since the begin- 
ning of August, were considerable and resources were not wanting to com- 
plete the war material. Accordingly, though the battle of Chatillon (Sep- 
tember 19) had led Trochu to shut himself up within the line of the forts, 
the emeny had to remain satisfied with a blockade the long duration of 
which neither besiegers nor defenders, moreover, foresaw. Thereafter 
Paris communicated with the outside world only by means of balloons or 
carrier-pigeons. 

The Fighting around Paris. — ^Until November the defence remained 
satisfied with offensive reconnaissances (battles of Villejuif, September 23; 
Chevilly, 30; Chatillon, October 13; Malmaison 21.) The battle of 
Bourget (October 30) came near having serious consequences. The report 
of the capitulation of Metz having spread at the same time as the news of 
this check, a movement directed by Flourens and Blanqui almost over- 
threw the government. Jules Ferry's energy and the arrival of the Breton 
mobiles delivered it, but thought it ought to strengthen itself by a plebiscite. 
In November the great sallies began. It was rather late, for the Germans 
had already had time to fortify themselves by taking advantage of the many 
obstacles presented by the surroundings of Paris. The consequence of the 
news of victory as Coulmiers was an effort in the direction of Champigny 
in the east (battles of Villiers, November 30, and Champigny, December 
2). A second attack on Bourget (December 21) succeeded no better. By 
this time famine was already making itself felt. Mortality had almost 
quadrupled. Both lighting and heating had given out. By the beginning 
of January recourse had already to be had to horseflesh diet, and soon to 
almost innumerable expedients; the rations doled out to the inhabitants 
continued to diminish in quantity, and the bread they received contained 
every possible ingredient but wheat. The Prussians, who knew all about 
the internal condition of Paris, then resolved to bombard the city, hoping in 
that way to lower the spirits of the population. After long efforts they had 
collected much siege artillery, which they began to use on December 27. 
The forts and also the city of Saint-Denis suffered rather seriously, but the 
projectiles did but little damage in Paris and reached only certain quarters 
of it. Lack of provisions, however, produced much more serious results. 



6oo Formation of German Unity 

Before capitulating Trochu made a last effort in the direction of Versailles. 
This was the battle of Buzenval (January 9), in which the national guard 
distinguished itself, but too late. Every effort failed against the intrench- 
ments constructed by the Germans. On January 28 only ten days' pro- 
visions were left. Immediate capitulation became necessary and was 
signed that day at Versailles. All the defences were surrendered except 
Mont Valerien and twelve thousand men left to keep order, and the city 
was taxed two hundred million francs. Bismarck demanded, besides, that 
the Prussians enter Paris, but they remained satisfied with occupying the 
Champs Elysees quarters for a few days. 

Fall of Metz and Otfier Fortified Places. — With the exception of 
Bitche and Belfort, which resisted until the end, the other fortified places 
had succumbed long before Paris. The Second Empire had neglected 
putting them in proper condition, and the insufficiency of means sometimes 
had a most unfavorable influence on the firmness of the officers in charge. 
Laon surrendered at the first summons, but the chief engineer blew up the 
citadel just as the enemy were entering. Marsal, Thionville, Schlettstadt, 
Soissons, Verdun and Toul offered scarcely any resistance. Strasburg 
had been besieged since August 17 and bombarded since the i8th by Gen- 
eral von Werder. The Prussians took as targets the library and the 
cathedral, which, along with a large portion of the city, were burned. Yet 
the place succumbed only after a regular siege (September 28). Phals- 
burg yielded only in December, when no more provisions were left. 

The giving up of Metz was by far the most painful, for it was less the 
loss of a place than that of the last regular army. It is not quite certain 
that Bazaine, after Gravelotte and Saint-Privat, could have broken the 
investment line, but it is almost positive that he did not wish to try. His 
fixed idea was to do nothing so as to keep his army intact and to use it 
after the war, which he thought would soon end, in playing a great political 
part. Therefore he subordinated his duty to the calculations of his sel- 
fishness, which fully justifies, outside of every other reason, the sentence 
passed upon him later on. His crime was further aggravated by his 
negotiations with the enemy, whose wretched dupes, he had been made. 
After having feigned desire to make sallies, first on August 26, and then on 
August 31 and September i (battles of Noisseville), he thereafter fought 
only slight skirmishes having revictualling as their object, such as that at 
Ladonchamps (September 27). Just a month later exhaustion of pro- 
visions brought on capitulation. With Metz Bazaine surrendered one hun- 
dred and seventy-three thousand men and fourteen hundred pieces of artil- 
lery; nor did it even occur to him to have the flags burned. 



Formation of German Unity 60 1 

The Army of the Loire. — ^The delegation sent to Tours in September, 
or rather Admiral Fourichon and his co-workers, had begun the organization 
of new forces. The arrival of Gambetta, who had left Paris in a balloon on 
October 8, gave an energetic impulse to the national defence. Of the old 
troops there remained in September only five complete regiments of infantry 
and three of cavalry. The barracks contained scarcely fifty thousand men. 
In the beginning of October, however, Admiral Fourichon had succeeded 
in putting a hundred thousand men on foot. In four months this figure 
rose to six hundred thousand with fourteen hundred cannon. As the sea 
was free, it was easy to procure, especially in England and America, the 
needed material. But it was impossible to give to all these improvised 
soldiers and officers the military habits or the power to execute great strateg- 
ical movements. The first of them ready for use had been stationed in 
front of Orleans. They were beaten at Arthenay (October lo) by the 
Bavarians and driven back beyond Orleans. Some days later (October i8) 
a Prussian division seized Chateaudun. General d'Aurelles de Paladines 
an energetic old soldier, reorganized the troops and (November 9) by the 
victory of Coulmiers made the Bavarians evacuate Orleans. But the 
arrival of Prince Frederick Charles with the army to which Metz had capit- 
ulated did not permit that success to be followed up. An offensive move- 
ment on Paris by way of Fontainebleau was defeated at Beaune-la-Rolande 
(November 28) and Loigny-Poupry (December 2). Then the Germans 
attacked and cut in two the army of the Loire at Chevilly, after which they 
recaptured Orleans. De Paladines was removed from the command and Gen- 
eral Chanzy placed at the head of the two corps remaining on the right bank of 
the Loire. The rest, with Bourkabi, who had escaped from Metz before 
the capitulation, formed the first army, with headquarters near Bourges, 
and later on became the army of the East. Against the Germans Chanzy 
waged a war of positions which he carried on with all the success that could 
be expected of troops as new as his. On December 7-10 he fought the 
series of combats known as the battle of Beaugency-Cravant. Obliged to 
retreat in consequence of the capture of Blois, he uncovered Tours, which 
the delegation had abandoned for Bordeaux (December 8), and fell back on 
the Loire so as to remain within reach of Paris. After fighting at Freteval 
and Vendome (December 15) against the troops of the grand duke of 
Mecklenburg, the condition of his army compelled him to make a forced 
march to Le Mans. The Prussians, too, had also sufi^ered a great deal, for 
the winter was exceptionally severe. The march of the first army of the 
Loire towards the East enabled Frederick Charles to unite with the grand 
duke, and this union inflicted on Chanzy the loss of the battle of Le Mans 
(January 11 and 12). The French army, sorely tried and decimated by 



6o2 Formation of German Unity 

typhus, withdrew beyond the Mayenne (January 17). The Prussians 
occupied Alen9on and Tours. 

Operations in the North and East. — In the north Faidherbe had 
played a part similar to that of Chanzy. His army, which then had only 
seventeen thousand men, had lost the line of the Somme by the battle of 
Villiers-Bretonneux (November if) before he had taken charge. On 
December 5 Manteuffel occupied Rouen. Faidherbe, on the 23d, fought 
the indecisive battle of Pont-Noyelles. He was more fortunate on January 
3 at Bapaume, where he defeated General von Goeben; but as Peronne 
capitulated on the 9th, from that time the Prussians held the line of the 
Somme. Then Faidherbe tried to march on Paris by way of the Oise, but, 
stopped on the 19th by defeat at Saint-Quentin, he had to withdraw towards 
Cambrai. 

In October General von Werder, having brought the siege of Strasburg 
to a close, had moved towards the Vosges. General Cambriels, defeated 
at Bourgonce and Brouvelieures (October 6 and 11), retrograded on 
Remiremont and thence to the Ognon, where, at Cussey, he suffered another 
check (October 22). He withdrew towards Besan9on. Werder, having no 
field artillery, left him there in peace and sent a Badenese division to occupy 
Dijon (October 30). Burgundy was defended by Garibaldi with volun- 
teers of all descriptions (fourteen thousand men) and by Cremer, who had 
sixteen thousand mobilized at Beaune. Acting independently of each other, 
they succeeded only in fighting skirmishes with the Germans, who forced 
Cremer to retreat to Beaune. It was then that De Freycinet, whom Gam- 
betta had taken as colleague, and who inspired the strategy of the pro- 
visional government, thought of trying a great diversion towards Lorraine 
by sending the first army of the Loire along the Saone and the Doubs. 
Success would have brought the raising of the siege of Paris. This opera- 
tion, very fine in theory, was not only too late but required troops posses- 
sing qualities not then to be found. Bourbaki, entrusted with its execution, 
disposed of one hundred thousand men. He was able to begin his march 
only on January 5, going up the Ognon valley to raise the siege of Belfort 
protected by Werder. Driven back at Villersexel (January 9), with fifty 
thousand men the Prussian general took up his stand on the Lisaine, 
between Montbeliard and Hericourt. All of Bourbaki's efforts were power- 
less to dislodge him (battle of Hericourt, January 15-17). The slowness 
of the Saone and Loire transports had enabled the Prussian staff to send a 
fresh army under Manteuffel. He passed between Langres and Dijon, 
where Garibaldi was, and the latter, with forty thousand men at his disposal, 
let himself be outwitted by a Prussian brigade. While the French army 



Formation of German Unity 603 

was retreating with difficulty on Besan^on, where Bourbaki, who had tried 
to commit suicide, was succeeded by General Clinchant, and then on Pon- 
tarlier amid terrible sufferings (January 28), ManteufFel, approaching the 
Jura from the west, occupied its plateaus and cut off the southern roads. 
Clinchant, ignorant of the clause excepting him from the armistice, let the 
enemy cut off his last line of retreat and had no more resource left but to 
cross over into Switzerland (February i). 

Treaty of Frankfort — the New German Empire. — Gambetta and 
Chanzy wanted to contiiiue the war, but they were alone in holding this 
opinion. On January 28 the government of National Defence had signed 
an armistice. Immediately it also ordered the election of a National 
Assembly, and on February 13 this body met at Bordeaux, elected Thiers 
provisionally as head of the executive power. He was sent to negotiate 
with Bismarck, and preliminaries of peace were reached at Versailles on 
February 26. After painful deliberation, the Assembly ratified this action 
(March i). The final treaty was concluded at Frankfort on May 10. 
France gave up Alsace except Belfort and its territory, and of Lorraine 
almost the whole department of the Mozelle with Metz, nearly half that of 
the Meurthe, and two cantons of the Vosges. In addition it had to pay an 
indemnity of five milliards of francs (one billion dollars), with interest until 
payment was completed. This result having been reached two and a half 
years later, the last German troops then evacuated France. 

Before its close the war had brought about the chief result which Bis- 
marck, now a prince, had expected of it. The king of Bavaria, as the most 
powerful of the German princes after the king of Prussia, had taken it upon 
himself to offer the imperial crown to William I. The proclamation of the 
empire took place in the palace of Versailles on January 18, 1871. The 
institutions of the Confederation of the North, the Bundesrath (Federal 
Council) consisting of delegates of the princes, and the Reichstag (formerly 
Bundestag) elected by universal suffrage, were extended to the whole of 
Germany. But the German emperor was not a parliamentary monarch. 
From the fact that the consent of both assemblies is necessary to change the 
law he governs as he pleases and has no other ministerial representative 
than the high chancellor of the empire depending solely on the sovereign. 
After 1870 he remained what he had been previously in Prussia, the essential 
representative of the country and the supreme head of the military forces. 

The German empire has twenty-six distinct States without Lauenburg, 
of which the king of Prussia is special sovereign. Its area is 208,830 square 
miles (of which Prussia alone has 134,603), and, by the census of December 
I, 1905, its population is over sixty millions. The presidency of the empire 



6o4 Formation of German Unity 

belongs to the king of Prussia and is hereditary in his family. Besides the 
Imperial Parliament, each State has its own special legislature and laws, 
but railroads regarded as necessary for the defence of Germany or the 
facilitating of general communications may come under a law of the empire, 
even against the opposition of the members of the Confederation whose 
territory is traversed. The States have their respective armies, but it is 
the emperor who disposes of them; he appoints the heads of the contingents, 
approves the generals, and has the right to establish fortresses over the whole 
territory of the empire. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 



Eastern Europe After the Crimean War 



Russia — the Serfs and the Poles. — The defeat of the Russian armies 
in the Crimea entailed that of the old aristocracy. The reign of Alexander 
II was, as far as the country and the environment permitted, that of western 
Liberalism. After the treaty of Paris Russia bethought itself of internal 
reorganization, but without prejudice to the compensations which it reserved 
to itself in the interior of Asia, to be mentioned later on. The most strik- 
ing manifestation of this new state of mind was the emancipation of the 
serfs. Nicholas I had thought of it all his hfe, and the Crimean war, after 
that of 1 8 12, had shown the danger of serfage, which, moreover, was of re- 
cent institution and did not exist throughout the whole empire. A mani- 
festo issued on March 3, 1861, abolished the system, but the most remark- 
able feature of this measure was that the peasants won not only liberty, but 
also possession of the land, the lord being obliged to cede to his peasants a 
portion of his domain in return for the payment of a certain number of annu- 
ities. The peasants' shares were grouped in communes (mir) and cantons 
(volost) wath autonomous administration. This distribution of property 
was the consequence of the primitive system of land tenure, as the peasant 
could not be evicted by the lord. In any case, one of its results was the 
preventing of a rural proletariate from coming into existence. 

Alexander II was also anxious to conciliate Poland, where the enfran- 
chisement of Italy and the concessions made to the Hungarians by Francis 
Joseph had aroused fresh hopes. The Agricultural Society, organized by 
Count Andrew Zamoiski, served them as an organ, and, moreover, a moder- 
ate organ. Other Poles, such as the Marquis Vielepolski, wished to revive 
Poland by the hand and with the aid of Russia. In consequence of various 
manifestations (towards the end of i860 and early in 1861), the czar granted 
to Poland a beginning of autonomy (ukase of March 26, 1861.) But 
lack of good will on the part of a portion of the Russian administration, and 
of patience in the Poles, as well as acts of violence committed, and in the 
last place the seizing and carrying off, under the pretext of conscription, of 
a large number of young men (on the night of January 15, 1863), brought 

^606 



6o6 Eastern Europe After the Crimean War 

on an insurrection. The insurgents, who numbered but a few thousands, 
led by the dictator Marian Langiewicz, had to confine themselves to waging 
on the Russians a war of skirmishes that led to a very severe repression, 
especially on the part of General Muravief, governor of Wilna, who de- 
clared it "useless to make prisoners." By extraordinary means of com- 
pression the Russian government undertook to annihilate the PoHsh nation- 
ality. The very name of Poland was abolished and for it was substituted 
the title of government of the Vistula. For the PoHsh language the Russian 
was substituted ever}'where. Lastly, Catholicism was hampfered and 
persecuted in every way to the advantage of Orthodoxy. As that did not 
suffice, a ukase forbade the Poles to acquire lands, in their own countiy, 
otherwise than by inheritance. These measures, however, have been a 
total failure, but they had one unexpected result, against which the Russians 
themselves, under Alexander III, were obliged to react, namely, that of 
favoring German infiltration into Poland. 

The Polish revolt had most unpleasant consequences for France. 
Urged by England as well as by his own imagination. Napoleon III fell into 
the trap set for him by the Enghsh and Austrian prime ministers, Palmerston 
and Rechberg; on June 17, 1863, in concert with them, he addressed to the 
Russian government an almost threatening note in favor of the Poles. The 
czar, who at the same time learned through intentional indiscretions that the 
emperor of the French had tried to organize a European coalition against 
him, energetically refused to admit any foreign interference in the aff'airs 
of Poland, which, he said, concerned only Russia. It was thus the under- 
standing reached in 1856 was broken, to the great advantage of Prussia, 
which, guided by Bismarck, had immediately off"ered its aid to suppress the 
revolt. 

Turkey under Abdul Aziz. — Abdul Medjid reigned until June 25, 
1 86 1, the date of his death and of the accession of his brother, Abdul Aziz. 
The Crimean war had not reconciled the Mussulmans and the Christians, but 
had the opposite result. Accordingly, in July, 1858, there were massacres at 
Jedda in which the consuls of France and England perished. In i860 simi- 
lar scenes were enacted on a larger scale in the Libanus. Already in 1841 the 
English agents, from hatred of France, had stirred up the Druses and the 
Turks against the Maronites or Syrian CathoHcs, who had been under 
France's protection since the time of the Crusades. In 1845, ^^ conse- 
quence of these deeds, the Mussulmans had fallen upon the Christians. 
France had succeeded in obtaining a rather favorable arrangement for the 
latter. In May, i860, the Druses, professing a half-Mussulman half- 
pagan belief, renewed the outrages and, with the complicity of the Ottoman 



Eastern Europe After the Crimean War 607 

officials, the massacre extended from the Maronite country to Damascus, 
where a single Christian would not have been left but for the intervention 
of the exiled Algerian hero, Abd-el-Kader. Only the consulates of England 
and Prussia were respected. Napoleon III succeeded in obtaining from 
England, not without delays and difficulties, permission to send a French 
military corps to Syria. The special agent of the Ottoman government, 
Fuad Pasha, proceeded to an energetic repression, and the Libanus re- 
ceived an autonomous administration. 

The reign of Abdul Aziz was marked by a war against Montenegro 
(1862) which had supported an insurrection of the Christians of Herze- 
govina. Omer Pasha defeated the Montenegrins and imposed rather 
severe conditions on them. In 1867, in consequence of various incidents, 
the Porte abandoned the four fortresses which it still occupied in Servia, 
one of them being the citadel of Belgrade. In the preceding year Crete 
had risen in insurrection, with the evident support of the Greeks. It was 
subdued only in 1869. Again the sultan had to grant it a constitution 
(September 18, 1867). The defeat of France in 1870 was to have most 
serious consequences for the Turks. In the first place Russia, on October 
31, 1870, declared it would no longer observe the clause of the treaty of Paris 
relative to the Black Sea. All that England could obtain was that the 
abolition of this clause should be submitted to a European conference, 
which, naturally, ratified Russia's action (Conference of London, March 
13, 1871). 

Rumania and Servia after 1856. — Some years elapsed, during 
which Sultan Abdul Aziz continued to ruin the empire by his prodigalities. 
In spite of all the laws decreed in favor of the Christians, their situation 
had remained bad and was constantly growing worse. Now, on the other 
hand, Bismarck thought that a fresh attack by Russia on the Ottoman, 
empire would not lead to much advantage for the empire of the czars, 
but would for a long time rivet Austria and England to the German policy. 
Besides, what had happened in the principalities called vassals showed 
how easy it would be to emancipate the Christians without deHvering them 
up to Russia. In Rumania the two principalities, in spite of Austria, had 
m 1859 placed themselves under one and the same hospodar. Colonel 
Alexander John Couza. On December 10, 1861, the Porte had recognized 
the legislative and administrative union of Moldavia and Wallachia. Couza 
having been overthrown by a mihtary conspiracy in February, 1866, the 
princely crown, declined by the count of Flanders, was given to Prince 
Charles of Hohenzollern, of the elder or non-royal branch of the family. In 
Servia Prince Alexander Karageorgevitch, a descendant of the hero of the 



6o8 Eastern Europe after the Crimean War 

war of independence, had been overthrown in 1858 and succeeded by the 
aged Milosh Obrenovitch, who had restored heredity of the princely dig- 
nity in favor of his family. He died in i860 and was succeeded by his 
son Michael, who obtained the evacuation of the last citadels occupied 
by the Turks; but on June 10, 1869, he was assassinated by supporters 
of the rival family. Michael's grandnephew, the too famous Milan, took 
his place at once without difficulty. Michael had died at a time when 
there was question of making him governor of Bosnia, which would have 
completed the Serb State. Probably Austria would not easily have accepted 
such a solution. But the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where 
an indigenous, but Mussulman, aristocracy was cruelly oppressing the 
rayas, was intolerable. Already in 1857 and 1867 insurrections had 
broken out. 

War in Bosnia, Bulgaria, Servia and Montenegro. — In 1875, at 
the instigation of Russian agents, the movement was renewed. "Brothers,'* 
said the insurgents' manifesto, "it is a very long time since the battle of 
Kossovo was fought (in 1389, by which Murad I destroyed the Servian 
empire), but since that day the nation has endured truceless and merciless 
injustice, pillage and harsh treatment." The insurrection soon became 
general, and the neighboring countries sent money and volunteers. Serbs, 
Montenegrins and Dalmatians flocked to reinforce the bands. In that 
rugged and difficult country the Turkish troops suffered a series of checks. 
Europe intervened at once through the intermediation of the Austrian 
chancellor, Andrassy, who demanded from the sultan administrative 
reforms that were conceded (February 12, 1876). But the insurgents 
refused to believe in the Turkish promises, and, the French and German 
consuls at Salonica, having just then been assassinated by a fanatical 
populace (May 7), Germany, Russia and Austria, with the approval of 
France and Italy, but not of England, summoned the Porte to grant to 
the insurgents a two months' armistice and for the future, administrative 
quasi-autonomy (Memorandum of May 11). 

The sultan Abdul Aziz had alienated those around him by his incap- 
acity and reckless expenditures. Quite recently (October, 1875) he had 
decreed the reduction of the debt to half the original amount. During 
the night of May 29-30, 1876, he was overthrown by his own ministers 
under the direction of the famous Midhat Pasha, and assassinated two 
days later. The report was spread abroad that he had committed suicide, 
and it was only in 1881 that the truth became known in all its details, 
when Abdul Hamid II ordered the trial and condemnation to death of the 
murderers of his uncle. The elder of the two nephews of Abdul Aziz, 



Eastern Europe after the Crimean War 609 

Prince Murad (Murad V), was proclaimed; but in August, under the 
pretext that he was insane, he was deposed, kept in confinement, where 
he died on August 29, 1904, and was succeeded by his brother, Abdul 
Hamid II. 

Some time before, insurrection in Bulgaria had aggravated the situa- 
tion of the empire. Of itself it was far from formidable. The Turks 
exasperated the inhabitants to madness by terrible massacres which 
shocked all Europe and turned even English opinion against them. Servia 
and Montenegro, urged by Russia, which had sent General Tchernaief 
to direct the Servian army, then decided to enter the field (July i), after 
the Turks had refused to cede to them Bosnia and Herzegovina. But, 
to everybody's great astonishment, the Ottoman army, though commanded 
by the aged and incapable Abdul Kerim, won a whole series of victories. 
Tchernaief had wanted to invade Bulgaria by way of the Morava valley. 
While his lieutenant, Lechanin, let himself be beaten at Valiki Isvor and 
Zaitchar, he was himself defeated at Pandirolo (July 30) and Kniajevatz (31). 
An armistice stopped the Turkish armies just as they were about to make 
Alexinats capitulate (August 24). War having been resumed after a 
fruitless effort to come to an understanding, the Serbs further lost the 
bloody battle of Djunis (October 19), were driven from Deligrad and 
Kruchevats, and obliged to abandon Alexinats. Russia could not hon- 
orably let them perish. Its ambassador, Ignatief, by threat imposed 
an armistice which, on March i, 1877, became a definitive peace. 

The Ottoman Constitution — Russia Declares War. — The grand 
vizier, Midhat Pasha, a great admirer of England, foreseeing that Euro- 
pean intervention in the internal affairs of the empire was about to become 
inevitable, thought of preventing it by getting his master to promulgate, 
on December 23, 1876, a constitution copied from the classic models. In 
it were seen to figure, side by side with a senate for life and deputies elected 
for four years by all the sultan's subjects, all the ordinary formulas on the 
civil equality of all the Ottomans, eligibility of all to the offices, independ- 
ence of the courts, individual liberty, etc. Even though Midhat had 
immediately convened the Chamber of Deputies, the Turkish constitution 
only provoked a universal laugh, and, as the czar was still hesitating as 
to whether he would rush directly into war, he lent himself to a last effort, 
a conference at Constantinople, in which the representatives of the six 
great powers elaborated a plan of reforms that implied autonomy for the 
Servian and Bulgarian countries and their temporary occupation by Bel- 
gian troops. For this last condition was even substituted that of a com- 
mission of control (December, 1876 — January, 1877). The Turks refused. 

30 



6io Eastern Europe after the Crimean War 

They were urged by England and believed the czar would not go to ex- 
tremes. If, in fact, Grand Duke Nicholas and General Ignatief urged 
him to war. Chancellor Gortchakof was decidedly opposed to it. But 
Bismarck wanted it so as to paralyze Russia and alienate from it Austria 
and England, and, so as to make sure of it, even sent to the czar a whole 
plan of campaign elaborated at Berlin. As Alexander II was, moreover, 
pledged to make no conquest south of the Danube, there was no risk in 
letting him act. The Turks, misunderstanding the situation, refused to 
consent to a fresh demand for reforms (London Protocol, April 3) and to 
treat with Montenegro (April 11). The czar, who had subordinated 
his neutrality to the latter condition, answered with a declaration of war 
dated from Kishinef, the headquarters of his army (April 24). 

The Russo-Turkish War — Early Operations. — ^With the exception 
of unimportant operations in the Black Sea, the war of 1877-8 had two 
seats — in Europe Bulgaria and Rumelia, and in Asia Armenia. We may 
distinguish three successive phases in Asia as well as in Europe; after 
having suffered a series of rapid checks, the Turks recovered themselves 
for a moment, but soon relapsed, and in a definitive manner. In Novem- 
ber, 1876, Russia had mobilized six army corps in Bessarabia under the 
command of Grand Duke Nicholas. At the end of April, 18/7, it put 
in motion two hundred and thirty thousand men, who, on the 24th, began 
to cross the Pruth while General Skobelef was seizing the bridges of the 
Sereth, which, with inconceivable negligence, the Turks had failed to 
destroy. Rumania, which had entered into an agreement on April 16 
to let the Russian troops pass, signed a formal alliance (May 14) when 
the Turkish monitors had bombarded Kalafat. The Russians, embarrassed 
by the exceptional rise of the rivers and the lack of good means of com- 
munication, spent a very long time in deploying along the Danube. For- 
tunately for them the sirdar-ekrem (Turkish commander-in-chief), Abdul 
Kerim, to whom deep-laid plans were attributed because he had none, 
remained motionless at Shumna. He had, moreover, only a hundred and 
eighty-five thousand men, very badly distributed throughout the whole of 
Bulgaria. 

It was only in June that the Russians were able to cross the Danube 
on the 2ist and 22d near Galatz (a mere diversion), and on the 27th at 
Zimnitsa (the decisive operation). Nicopolis was at once captured, and 
early in July Bulgaria was invaded. General Gourko, hurrying towards 
the Balkans, whose poor defensive condition the Prussian staff had pointed 
out, seized Tirnova and Gabrova, crossed the Hainkioeui pass, and, on 
July 18, captured the Shipka pass from the south. He could then raid 



Eastern Europe after the Crimean War 6ii 

as far as Yeni Sagra. The Russians were no less successful in Asia. 
Their right wing, however, had failed in a march on Batoum (June 24). 
But in the centre General Loris Melikof had captured Ardahan on May 
17, and invested Kars on June 4. 

Temporary Turkish Revival. — Gourko^s arrival in Thrace had 
produced a panic at Constantinople. The war minister and the sirdar 
were dismissed (July 22), Mehemet Ali was put at the head of the Danube 
army, and Suleiman Pasha was hastily recalled from Montenegro, with 
his fifty thousand men, to recapture the Balkans. On the other hand, 
the commander of the Widdin troops, Osman Pasha, unable to save 
Nicopoli, had on July 18 taken his stand at the important road centre, 
Plevna, with twenty-five thousand men. The Russians, thinking there 
were only six thousand there, on July 19 suffered a bloody repulse while 
trying to capture the place with insufficient troops. On July 30 the attack 
was renewed with like result. The Russians then called out their reserves, 
especially the guard, and the Rumanian army, which they had hitherto 
kept aloof and which soon showed that it was fully as good as its allies. 
Mehemet Ali, succeeding Abdul Kerim, had at first wanted to call to his 
aid the army of his colleague Suleiman, so as to be able to attack the Rus- 
sians on the Yantra and menace their communications. But Suleiman 
persisted in trying to recapture the Shipka pass. The Russians remained 
masters of it (September 17), but could not thereafter leave it, as the Turks 
had planted batteries that commanded its outlets. Mehemet Ali, on the 
other hand, had been stopped by the czarevitch (afterwards Alexander 
III) in the battle of Tserkovnia (September 21). 

The Russians had been less fortunate in the direction of Plevna. 
After their second repulse they had remained a month without acting, and 
the Turks had taken advantage of that interval to surround the city with 
solid and well armed works forming a circuit of twenty-one miles. The 
Russians captured Lovats on September 3, and the victor, Skobelef, went 
northward to join the rest of the Russo-Rumanian army of ninety thousand 
men. From the 7th to the 12th, furious assaults were made on Plevna. 
The Turks, armed with Martini-Henry repeating rifles, decimated their 
assailants with a terrible fire. The Russian fourth corps alone lost two- 
thirds of its effective strength. The Rumanians succeeded only in con-' 
quering the Grivitsa redout, a useless exploit, for six hundred yards away 
it was commanded by still stronger works. And this meagre success had 
cost thirteen thousand men. The czar then had recourse to General 
Todleben, the defender of Sebastopol, who was of the opinion that Plevna 
would have to be reduced by a complete investment. The Russians, 



6i2 Eastern Europe after the Crimean War 

having received reinforcements, succeeded in so doing on October 31. 
In Asia Mukhtar Pasha, commander-in-chief, aided by the Hungarian 
renegade Kohlmann, had taken position at Zewin and there defeated 
Loris MeHkof (June 25). The latter and his Heutenant, Der Hugassof, 
had to retreat to the frontier. The Turks had the advantage until the 
end of September. 

Closing Period of the War.— Just then Loris Melikof, having 
received reinforcements, resumed the offensive. Nov^ with a numerical 
superiority of one-half, the Russians crushed the Turks at Aladja Dagh 
(October 15). Mukhtar Pasha had to abandon Kars, which was taken 
by assault during the night of November 17-18, and, after a fresh defeat 
at Deve Boyun (November 4), was cooped up in Erzerum. Affairs were 
in no better condition in Europe. Suleiman Pasha, Mehemet Ali's suc- 
cessor (October 3), had at first lost six weeks, and only on December 4 
had won minor successes at Slataritsa and Elena, soon compensated by 
defeat at Matchka (December 12). On the previous day, Osman Pasha, 
out of provisions, let himself be taken with forty thousand men in a despair- 
ing sortie. General Todleben was then of the opinion that the places in 
the quadrilateral should first be seized. Turkey would have only too 
gladly negotiated but the English ambassador, Layard, kept it from doing 
so with false promises of intervention. He was counting on the severity 
of the winter's stopping the Russians. Matters turned out otherwise. 
Grand Duke Nicholas, wishing to end the war himself (Alexander H 
spoke of rewarding the czarevitch's brilliant services with the supreme 
command), directed the Rumanians on Widdin, had the quadrilateral 
watched by two army corps, and sent the rest, with Gourko and Skobelef, 
across the Balkans. At the cost of unheard of fatigues, along almost 
impassable roads, Gourko, from December 25 to 31, crossed the Etropol 
Balkan and on January 2 entered Sofia, thus rallying to the Servian army, 
which had just taken the field again. Radetsky and Skobelef, on their 
part, turned Vessel Pasha's flank at Shipka, and on January 9 made him 
capitulate with thirty-five thousand men. Then Suleiman was beaten 
on January 19 after a three days' struggle in front of Philippopoli, and, 
in consequence of Skobelef's march was driven back into Rhodope. On 
January 30 Adrianople was occupied without resistance. 

Treaties of San Stefano and of Berlin.— Then the sultan signed 
an armistice (January 31) by which he gave up to the Russians the lines 
of Tchataldja covering Constantinople, and on February 5 the prelimi- 
naries of Kezanlyk. England wished to frighten Russia with a warlike 



Eastern Europe after the Crimean War 613 

demonstration of its fleet in the sea of Marmora. Grand Duke Nicholas 
answered by advancing to within two leagues of the capital, and on March 
3 General Ignatief imposed on the Turks the treaty of San Stefano. Before 
the war Russia had. promised the rival powers not to acquire territory 
beyond the Danube. It kept its word, taking only Bessarabia, lost in 
1856, in exchange for the Dobrudja, which it gave to the Rumanians. 
But Montenegro saw its territory trebled and received the ports of Spizza 
and Antivari. Servia acquired the department (liva) of Nich. Lastly, 
Bulgaria got more than half of Thrace, all of Macedonia less Salonica, 
and the Chalcidic peninsula, and was to form a vassal principality. In 
Asia the Russians obtained Kars, Ardahan, Batum and Bayezid. A war 
indemnity of twelve hundred miillion francs put the sultan in complete 
dependence on the czar. 

After San Stefano, in short, there was no more Turkey in Europe 
for it was evident that the sultan could not keep the provinces left to him. 
Bulgaria, administered and occupied by the Russians for two years, would 
give to them the Mediterranean naval stations so long coveted. And as 
the sultan had to pledge himself to bring about reforms in Armenia, and 
in Asia Minor also, the czar would have had permanent reasons for inter- 
vention. England protested vehemently through its new minister of 
foreign affairs, the marquis of Salisbury (note of April i). The prime 
minister, Lord Beaconsfield, even called in the native troops of India. 
There would have been nothing in that to make Russia recede if the latter, 
whose finances and army were not in very good condition, could count 
on the neutrality of the continental powers. But Austria wished to promise 
its aid only if the whole western part of the peninsula with Salonica were 
given to it, and Bismarck refused to prevent that power from having 
recourse to arms. Russia and England saw that he sought only to pro- 
voke a European war, in which he would remain neutral to fish for him- 
self in troubled water, probably in the direction of the Netherlands. They 
came to an understanding on May 30. Some days later (June 4) England 
got the sultan to cede to it the island of Cyprus in return for thereafter 
defending the Turkish empire in Asia. Bismarck on his part, so as the 
better to get Austria to oppose Russia, had promised Bosnia to the former. 

The Berlin congress (June 13 — July 13, 1878) did little more than 
give form to the arrangements adopted in advance in a general manner. 
Servia, Montenegro and Rumania were declared independent, but the 
last had, in spite of its earnest protests, to consent to the exchange of terri- 
tory already mentioned. The ceded portion of the Dobrudja was en- 
larged. Servia received Pirot, but lost Mitrovitsa. Montenegro's share 
was also considerably cut down, and its seaports were placed under Aus- 



6i4 Eastern Europe after the Crimean War 

trian supervision. Austria was authorized to occupy and administer 
Bosnia and Herzegovina, nominally left to the sultan, and merely to occupy 
the district of Novi-Bazar, thus separating Servia from Montenegro. Bul- 
garia was reduced to the province of that name, wholly north of the Bal- 
kans except Sofia. Northern Thrace, between the Balkans and the 
Rhodope, would form the privileged province of Eastern Rumelia, with a 
Christian governor appointed for five years by the sultan. The Russian 
occupation contemplated by the treaty of San Stefano was forbidden. 
Macedonia was given back to Turkey, to be the scene of future outrages 
and the cause of future trouble. Greece was promised enlargement which 
it was not wholly to receive. In Asia the Turks recovered Bayezid and 
the Alashgerd valley. The Danubian fortresses were to be demolished 
and the navigation of that river was made free. Russia, in short lost 
nearly all the fruits of its victories, and the ulterior events were to further 
aggravate its check. 

Rumelia and Bulgaria — Servo-Bulgarian War. — Austria took 
possession of Bosnia, but not without difficulty. To overcome the resist- 
ance of the Mussulmans in insurrection under Hadji Locha, it had to 
mobilize over two hundred thousand men. The chief event of this cam- 
paign was the taking of Serajevo by assault. On their part the Albanians, 
secretly supported by the sultan, refused to let Montenegro take posses- 
sion of certain districts of their country. Prince Nikita at last accepted 
Dulcigno in exchange; and a naval demonstration of the six powers was 
further necessary to give it that port. On the side of Greece the sultan 
had to cede nearly all of Thessaly, but succeeded in retaining the claimed 
portion of Epirus between the Kalamas and the Arta gulf. On the advice 
of the powers, Bulgaria elected Prince Alexander of Battenberg, of the 
house of Hesse Darmstadt (Tirnova Assembly, 1879. Rumania erected 
itself into a kingdom in 1881, and Servia soon followed this example (1882). 

Rumelia had received as governor Aleko Pasha (Prince Vogo Rides). 
Almost wholly peopled by Bulgarians, it aspired to union with the northern 
principality. On September 18, 1885, a local movement forced the gov- 
ernor to leave, and Prince Alexander, at once summoned, made a solemn 
entrance into Philippopoli. The sultan did not try to prevent anything. 
But, while England approved of the revolution and Austria and Germany 
secretly favored it, Russia, directed by Alexander HI, who in 188 1 had 
succeeded his father (assassinated by the Nihilists as he was about to 
promulgate a liberal constitution), assumed a hostile attitude. It had, 
indeed, desired a dependent and half-Russian Bulgaria. The event, 
which had just occurred proved that its ward was escaping from it. As 



Eastern Europe after the Crimean War 615 

the intervention of a great power might have entailed dangerous conse- 
quences, it was Servia that stepped forward and declared war against 
Bulgaria on the pretext that the aggrandizement of the latter upset the 
equilibrium in the Balkans. It was generally believed that the Bulgarian 
army, composed of inexperienced militia and commanded by captains 
(Alexander III had just recalled all the superior officers, who were Rus- 
sians), would not resist the Servian army. The Bulgarians, in fact, are 
much more warlike than their neighbors; and their leaders. Prince Alex- 
ander and Major Panitsa, were different personages from the famous 
King Milan. On November 17, 18 and 19 the Servians, who had been 
threatening Sofia, were routed at Slivnitsa, pursued on their own territory, 
and beaten again at Pirot (November 27). Then Austria threatened the 
Bulgarians with intervention, which forced them to stop. The treaty 
of Bukharest (March 8, 1886), imposed by the powers, purely and simply 
restored the order existing before the war. Then the conference of Con- 
stantinople recognized the Prince of Bulgaria as governor for life of Rumelia. 

Bulgarian Revolution — Armenian Massacres. — In Bulgaria there 
was a numerous Russian party that had not forgiven Prince Alexander 
for his rupture with the czar. A military movement, or rather an act of 
highhandedness, momentarily overthrew the prince, who was put on 
shipboard on the Danube and carried off to Russian territory. It was 
very soon seen on what side was national opinion. The whole country 
arose in favor of the dispossessed sovereign, who immediately returned 
without opposition (1886). But, whether from discouragement or for 
other reasons, he abdicated almost immediately after a useless effort at 
reconciliation with the czar. The men who had restored him did not 
mean on that account to put themselves at Russia's mercy. They were 
led by the energetic Stambulof, whose terrible acts of violence, the result 
of circumstances and environment, should not make the statesman's 
great qualities be overlooked. Russia wished to impose as the new ruler 
the prince of Mingrelia, equivalent to saying a Russian governor. Stam- 
bulof saw that it would not go so far as to use force, and did not hesitate 
to brave it by bringing about the election of the Austrian candidate, Ferdi- 
nand of Saxe-Coburg, a grandson of King Louis Philippe of France. Con- 
spiracies were formed. Stambulof repressed them cruelly. He was 
reproached especially for the execution of Major Panitsa. "I have never 
killed but my country's enemies," the minister said to justify himself. 
In short, he desired the independence of Bulgaria. In 1895 Prince Ferdi- 
nand thought it was sufficiently assured and that a more moderate policy 
should be adopted. He dismissed Stambulof, who soon afterwards per- 



6i6 Eastern Europe after the Crimean War 

ished by assassination. After that Prince Ferdinand succeeded in becom- 
ing reconciled with the czar and in having himself recognized by the sultan 
and by all the powers. So as the better to establish his power, he had his 
eldest son, Boris, brought up in the Orthodox religion. 

The treaty of Berlin had provided for reforms in Armenia, that is, 
in Armenia properly so called and in the eastern provinces of Asia Minor. 
This promise, be it well understood, had not been kept, and the unfor- 
tunate Armenians were cruelly oppressed not only by the Ottoman admin- 
istration, but also by the warlike and pillaging tribes of the Kurds, on 
whom the sultan bestowed a special favor. In 1C94 the Armenians, 
stirred up by England, which desired at one and the same time to embar- 
rass the sultan and to annoy Russia, tried a rising both in their own country 
and at Constantinople, where they formed a numerous colony. The 
sultan, sure that Russia would not interfere, then organized terrible massa- 
cres whose victims have been estimated at three hundred thousand. He 
even went so far in his boldness as to order them at Constantinople itself, 
in answer to the protests which the foreign ambassadors had already sent 
to him. England, the first cause of all these atrocities, made no serious 
eflPort, moreover, to stop them. 

Cretan Insurrection — Turco-Greek War. — One consequence of 
the Armenian events was an insurrection in Crete, where the Christians 
of the Greek race, who formed two-thirds of the population, complained 
that the constitution granted to the island in 1867 had not been applied. 
There was question in reality of obtaining the union of the large island 
with the kingdom of Greece. The latter, dissatisfied with the territorial 
results obtained in 1881 in consequence of the application of one of the 
clauses of the treaty of Berlin, had tried in 1886, on the occasion of the 
Serbo-Bulgarian war, to obtain additional enlargement. A maritime 
blockade, organized by the great powers, had obliged it to abandon its 
warlike desires. To the Greeks the Cretan events seemed to furnish a 
favorable opportunity. Prince George was sent to Canea with a flotilla 
of torpedo boats and Colonel Vassos was entrusted with taking command 
of the insurgents. The powers could not agree on the line of conduct 
to be pursued, in consequence of the action of Germany, which emphati- 
cally declared itself in favor of Turkey. The Prussian general. Von der 
Goltz, had, at the head of a German mission, recognized the Turkish 
army. This army was far superior to that of Greece, which was lacking 
equally in numbers, order and discipline. 

Accordingly, directed by the Berlin cabinet, the Turks, commanded 
by Edhem Pasha, did not hesitate to take the offensive against the Greek 



m 




Eastern Europe after the Crimean War 617 

army, which, under the orders of the prince royal (diadochos), had con- 
centrated in Thessaly (April i8, 1897). The latter met only with defeat — 
it numbered only thirty-five thousand against Turkey's one hundred 
thousand men. At first Edhem Pasha drove the Hellenes from Larissa 
back on Pharsalia by the victories of Turnavos and Mati, then from Phar- 
salia on Domoko, in front of the Othrys mountains, and then pursued 
them from Domoko by a recent success. The Othrys, a simple chain, 
pierced by many passes, is not defensible. The Greeks had to retreat 
to Thermopylae. In Epirus they had been no more fortunate, as General 
Manos had been driven back on Arta by Osman Pasha. The Greeks 
yielded (May 18). The Delyanni ministry, which, in short, had endured 
rather than encouraged the war, was overthrown and succeeded by a 
Ralli ministry, which obtained peace through the czar's intermediation. 
Greece lost a few villages on the Thessalian frontier, but had also to pay 
the enormous sum of twenty million dollars, which the powers, it is true, 
procured for it, but by means of the establishment of a European control 
of its finances (September). One year later it had as a consolation stake 
the satisfaction of seeing Prince George, son of the king of the Hellenes, 
chosen as governor of Crete, at last rid of the Turkish soldiers. 

New Aspects of the Eastern Question. — ^The Eastern Question, in 
spite of the efforts made to lull it, still remains open, though the conditions 
surrounding it have changed somewhat. It will remain open as long as 
Mussulman authority is maintained on any point whatever of those beauti- 
ful regions. Europe cannot abandon them indefinitely to barbarism, but, 
on the other hand, their importance is such, and they contain regions of 
such exceptional value, the region of the straits, for example, that it is not 
easy for a final settlement to be brought about without a great conflict. 
What eff^ect the Russian revolution and England's changed attitude towards 
Turkey will have on the question, it is yet too early to determine. Owing also 
to Germany's championing the Porte, the old rivalries have become greatly 
complicated. England, mistress of Egypt and Cyprus, no longer attaches 
the same importance as of old to the maintenance of the Turkish empire. 
Russia, on the other hand, absorbed at first by the questions of the Extreme 
East, so disastrous to it in 1904-5, and then by internal turmoil that is still 
seething, thus doubly condemned to a waiting policy, seeks only to maintain 
the status quo. Shortly before the coming of the two crises mentioned, it 
is said that it wished to conclude with Austria a sort of agreement for the 
partition of the peninsula into two spheres of influence separated by a line 
drawn from Salonica to Vrania. But then Germany also from that side 
entered upon the scene. The services rendered by it to the sultan have given 



6i8 Eastern Europe after the Crimean War 

to it a great political influence, which it has used to effect the economic 
conquest of the country. William II's journey to Constantinople, Syria 
and Jerusalem (1898) had as its object the further exalting of the prestige 
of his people and his empire. German commerce is being developed ever 
more and more in the Ottoman provinces of Asia and Europe. The Ger- 
man colonies are constantly becoming more numerous, as are also their 
undertakings, such as seaports and railroads, especially the lines of Asia 
Minor and that from Constantinople to Bagdad. And England's interests 
in Egypt are now (1906) threatened with Mussulman hostility. 



I 



CHAPTER XXXVII 



England and Its Dependencies since 1856 



Growth of the United Kingdom's National Debt. — Besides the 
empty honor of having humiliated Russia and curbed its ambition for a 
time> the chief result for England of the Crimean war was the addition of 
thirty-three million pounds sterling to the national debt owed by its govern- 
ment. This debt, now amounting to nearly eight hundred million pounds 
(over seven-tenths of that of France, by far the largest of all such obligations) , 
is, indeed, mainly the remnant of a long growth, and nearly all of it was 
raised to meet the expenses of foreign wars. At the outbreak of the 
"glorious revolution" of 1688 the government owed the trifling sum of a 
little over six hundred and fifty thousand pounds, to which that event and 
its wars added nearly sixteen millions, and Marlborough's campaigns under 
Queen Anne almost thirty-eight millions more. Part of this was paid off 
in the time of George I, but in the reign of George II about eighty-seven 
millions were added, while the first twelve years of George III saw a reduc- 
tion of ten millions. The American war of independence added a hundred 
and twenty-one millions, making the total at its close two hundred and fifty 
millions, which was reduced considerably until 1793. Then repayment 
ceased, owing to the outbreak of the long series of wars with the French 
Revolution and Napoleon. In twenty-three years over six hundred millions 
were added to the debt for war purposes. Its amount in January 18 16, was 
over nine hundred millions. With peace secured, efforts were made to 
reduce it, and at the accession of Queen Victoria it stood at nearly seven 
hundred and eighty-eight millions, and cost twenty-nine millions a year. 
Again small sums were paid off annually until 1854, when the Crimean war, 
as stated above, added thirty-three millions. From 1858 onwards, repay- 
ments were made until 1899, except in 1868, 1875, 1878, 1879 and 1886, 
when there were slight increases. On March 31, 1899, the gross total was 
a little over six hundred and thirty-five millions, with an annual charge of 
twenty-three millions. The war In South Africa (1899-1902) and the 
military operations in China (1900) together accounted for an increase of 
nearly one hundred and fifty millions, the balance of cost, almost sixty- 

619 



620 England and Its Dependencies since 1856 

eight millions, being contributed by revenue. The present debt stands at 
the rate of eighty-seven and a half dollars (seventeen pounds, ten shillings) 
per head of the population of the United Kingdom, and the annual cost at 
nearly three dollars per head. 

Extension of British Sway in India. — Scarcely was England rid of 
the Crimean w^ar v^hen a most serious crisis confronted it in Hindustan, a 
native revolt of enormous magnitude, provoked by unusually active aggres- 
sion and impolitic conduct. In 1848 the conqueror of Lahore, the famous 
Lord Dalhousie, the "great proconsul," became governor-general, and at 
once proceeded to carry out an extreme policy of annexations. By the 
treaty of Byrowal (March 9, 1848) the Sikh realm v^as dismembered; a 
year later, however, the whole Punjaub was annexed. After a second war, in 
which the Sikhs, victorious at Chilianwala (January 13, 1849), were crushed 
at Gujerat (February 27), Cashmere alone retained a semblance of indepen- 
dence as a vassal State. The annexation of the Punjaub was followed by a 
second Burmese war (1852), which deprived the king of Burma of Pegu. 
Lord Dalhousie promoted the introduction of railways and the telegraph. 
He established cheap postage, promoted steam navigation with England by 
way of the Red Sea, and opened the Ganges canal, still one of the largest 
irrigation works in India. His annexation policy was much criticised at 
home. It proceeded on the principle that, British being preferable to 
native rule, gross misrule or a break in the natural succession justified, in 
the interest of the subject populations, the transfer of a native State to the 
British government. Thus did Satara in 1849, and in 1853 Jhansi, become 
British territory; and, on the death of the last of the Mahratta princes of 
Nagpur, his territory was annexed and became the Central Provinces in 
1853. But the most important annexation was that of Oude, one of the 
oldest kingdoms in India, brought about under the pretext that its sovereign 
was ruling it badly (1856). After repeated warnings to the alleged tyran- 
nical government, the annexation proclamation was issued, and the transfer 
took place without fighting or blood-shed, though the natives were not of 
the same opinion as the English; the government of their princes, with all 
its faults, was more acceptable to them than the direct sovereignty of the 
British, in spite of the improvement wrought by the latter. The aristocracy 
of the rajahs felt it was menaced. There ensued a silent but sullen agitation 
to which the English made the great mistake of paying little or no attention. 
Counting confidently on the fidelity of their Sepoys (a corrupted form of the 
native word sipahi, soldiers), they had from economy reduced the European 
troops to forty thousand men on the roll, but less in reality, while the Hindu 
army numbered tv/o hundred and fifteen thousand. 



England and Its Dependencies since 1856 621 

The Great Indian Mutiny. — ^When Canning was appointed (1856) to 
succeed Dalhousie, he left England pledged to pursue a policy of peace; but 
he was destined to face the greatest crisis that has threatened the British 
empire in India. There the malcontents had been circulating a prophecy 
announcing that the year 1857 would mark the end of British domination, 
and taking advantage of the indiscreet acts of certain preachers, led the 
native soldiers to believe that there was a scheme on foot to convert them by 
force to Christianity. Nothing more was needed to win over the Sepoy 
army, the only vigorous element that could be counted on. New greased 
cartridges having been brought into use, both Brahmanists and Mussulmans 
refused to use them, as they had been persuaded that the lubricant was a 
mixture of beef and pork fats. British authority wanted to coerce the 
recalcitrants, eighty-five of whom were condemned and put in chains. 
Next day (May 10, 1857) the Meerut garrison rebelled, freed the prisoners, 
and, immediately seizing Delhi, proclaimed the Grand Mogul, who was an 
octogenarian. The insurrection extended at once over the whole northern 
plain, but never reached the Indus basin of the reign of the Dekkan. All 
Europeans who could be reached were massacred everywhere. At Cawn- 
pore Major General Wheeler had shut himself up in the hospital with three 
hundred soldiers, armed civilians and a few hundred women and children. 
Lack of water compelled him to capitulate. The leader of the rebels, 
Nana Sahib, a sovereign's adopted son who had been robbed of his inheri- 
tance by the English, violated the pledges he had given. The boats on 
which the garrison was descending the Ganges were sunk and the men 
massacred. The women and children, at first spared, met the same fate 
when the British troops approached the city. The English answered with 
terrible executions. Trying to make up in daring for their lack of numbers, 
they came on June 10 to besiege Delhi. It was only in December that, 
after having been reinforced, they captured the place by assault after eight 
days' fighting on the barricades. The whole population were driven out, 
many rebels were shot from the cannon's mouth, and the Grand Mogul's 
entire family were murdered in cold blood with revolvers by order of the 
officer entrusted with carrying them off as prisoners. Only the aged 
emperor was spared on account of his advanced years, and he the last of 
his race, died a captive at Gwalior. Cawnpore had been reoccupied in 
July by General Havelock, who in September delivered Lucknow, where the 
Europeans had been beseiged for three months- In 1858 Oude was sub- 
dued by Sir Colin Campbell. Then a promise of amnesty brought the 
rebellion to an end. 

Suppression of the East India Company. — Long adversely criti- 



62 2 England and Its Dependencies since 1856 

cized, the East India Company did not survive the Great Mutiny. The 
British ParHament suppressed it in 1858, when its eventful annals v^^ere 
brought to a close by the transfer of its administration to the crown. Since 
then India has been governed by a viceroy, under the Secretary of State for 
India, and has had to advise him an executive council (cabinet) and a legis- 
lative council appointed by him, which is, moreover, only a council of State 
entrusted with giving advice. The army was reorganized, the number of 
Europeans in it was increased, and care was taken to have no more native 
artillerymen. The new government conciliated the princes by making no 
more annexations, and tried to win over the masses by various adminis- 
trative reforms, especially in regard to the redistribution of the property 
tax. Irrigation canals were multiplied, as were also railroads. New 
crops, such as that of tea, were introduced, and others, like cotton, for 
example, were developed. Lastly, so as to give to foreign domination 
quite the appearance of an indigenous government, in 1877 Lord Beacons- 
field had his sovereign proclaimed empress of the Indies (Kaisar i Hind), 
an action that was ratified by a native assembly at Delhi. 

The reality, however, by no means corresponded with the glowing 
pictures which the English have often drawn of their Indian administration. 
Hindustan is a rich country in the sense that it produces much and has 
very fertile lands. But it is a country of the poor, nay, of paupers, because 
the population is extremely dense there in proportion to the extent of the 
cultivated lands. The result is that the taxes, which are about a fourth of 
the income, crush the poor wretches who have scarcely enough to sustain 
life. On the contrary, the British office-holders are paid colossal salaries, 
the commander-in-chief, for example, receiving a hundred and twenty-five 
thousand dollars a year. Accordingly famine is, as the English say, an 
institution of India, which is a purely agricultural country. But, besides 
famines caused by draughts, there is the chronic famine resulting from the 
fact that most of the Hindus have not the resources necessary for getting 
enough to eat. What, in spite of everything, constitutes the strength of 
English rule is that, with the exception of a small group of literates who have 
been educated in the colleges of European organization, multiplied espec- 
ially in recent years, there is at present in India no moral union. Much more 
than was Italy of old, is the great peninsula only a "geographical expres- 
sion." The character of its peoples, except in the mountainous regions of 
the north, would not, moreover, make them capable of an efi^ective rebellion. 
Danger to England can come only from without, from Russia, which has 
for some time bordered its Indian empire in the Pamirs. 

England's Second Afghan War. — ^The apparent increase of this 



England and Its Dependencies since 1856 623 

danger served England as an excuse for once more invading Afghanistan, 
after the British government had done all it was possible for it to do in 
order to conjure the danger. It already held Beluchistan as a protectorate. 
In 1878 the ameer of Cabul, Shere Ali having received a Russian embassy 
and dismissed an English mission, an army set out from India and occupied 
Cabul. He was deposed and his place given to Yakub, who, by the treaty 
of Gandamak (1879), ceded to the English all the passes leading from the 
Indus basin to the Iranian plateau. This is what the English call the 
scientific frontier of India. A resident. Mayor Cavagnari, was installed at 
Cabul. Ere long be perished in a riot. Then the English reoccupied 
Cabul, carried off Yakub, in whose place they put Abd-ur-Rahman; but 
they did not now seek to establish garrisons in a country so hostile. Abd- 
ur- Rahman was kept in alliance with Great Britain — and so has his son 
been since 1901 — by a very annual subsidy. British officers even proffered 
him their services. In the last place, the Anglo-Indian government built a 
railroad from Shikarpur, on the Indus, to the former Afghan city of Sham- 
man, near Candahar. In the region of the Pamirs the Anglo-Russian 
frontier was determined only in 1895. But the English have not yet com- 
pletely subjugated the warlike tribes of that extremely rugged region, nor 
even those in the direction of Beluchistan, against whom there was a war in 
1897. Despite all these precautions, it is quite certain that Russia, but for 
its reverses in the war with Japan (1904-5) and the internal turmoil that has 
since threatened it with anarchy and dissolution, would have no difficulty in 
hurling overwhelming forces on India. Though financial embarrassments 
following from the causes just stated would be increased by a long conflict 
with England in India, yet it is probably the reasons stated that lead it to 
solve by negotiations the difficulties that have arisen. It is now very 
difficult to say how soon, if at all, Russia and England will come to blows 
in that quarter. 

Meanwhile England was also extending its Indian empire eastward. 
In 1885 occurred the third Burmese war, by which upper Burma with the 
Shan States was added to the British dominions, and twelve years later 
a boundary dispute with France on the Mekong was settled by treaty. In 
1900, under Lord Curzon, the worst of the many Indian famines on record 
occurred. Four years later this viceroy sent a mission with a military 
escort to Lhassa, the capital of Thibet, which it entered only by force, and 
where it secured a favorable treaty. On account of a bitter dispute over 
military matters with the arrogant Lord Kitchener, commander-in-chief 
since 1902, Lord Curzon resigned in 1905, and was succeeded by the Earl 
of Minto. 

England again at War with China. — ^The Chinese did not long 



624 England and Its Dependencies since. 1856 

observe the treaties concluded after the opium war. Acts of violence 
committed on English subjects or sailors (the Arrow affair), or on mis- 
sionaries (murder of the Abbe Chapdelaine in Kuang-si), towards the close 
of 1857, brought about joint action by France and England. Canton was 
first occupied; then the allies made a descent on Taku, at the mouth of the 
Pei-ho, and seized it (May, 1858), thus opening the way to Tien-tsin. In 
that city the Chinese then signed treaties on June 26 which opened several 
new ports to European trade, stipulated various reparations and indem- 
nities, and obtained the right to have ambassadors at Pekin. But in the 
following year, when the English and French plenipotentiaries presented 
themselves at Taku, with a small squadron, to have the treaty ratified, they 
were received with cannon shots, (June). Admiral Hope, wounded, and 
without sufficient forces, had to withdraw. Napoleon III immediately 
sent a small army of eight thousand men under General Cousin-Montauban. 
The English forces, under Sir Hope Grant, numbered thirteen thousand. 
In August, i860, the Taku forts were captured, and the allies marched on 
Tien-tsin, which they took, and thence on Pekin, which they entered after 
a victory at Pa-li-kiao (September 21), won over the Tartar troops. The 
emperor's summer palace was pillaged, and then, the Chinese having restored 
the prisoners they had captured by ambuscade, while retaining the nego- 
tiators whom they had asked to have sent to them, the English, indignant 
at the tortures inflicted on their fellow-countrymen, returned to the summer 
palace and burned it (October 18). This act brought peace, for it forced 
the Chinese to take seriously the threat that was made to treat the Pekin 
imperial palace in like manner unless they had yielded by October 29. 
Urged by General Ignatief, minister of Russia, Prince Kong, on October 24 
and 25, signed the treaties of Pekin which renewed the former treaties with 
certain modifications and acknowledged France's protectorate over the 
Catholic missions. 

The Manchu dynasty of the Tsings was menaced by other attacks. 
It was then incurring far more serious dangers from internal revolts. Never, 
on account of its origin, had it been wholly accepted by the Chinese, and 
since the eighteenth century many secret societies had been organized to 
dethrone it. In 1850, under the direction of a certain Hong, the terrible 
revolt of the Tai-pings broke out and soon extended to the whole of south- 
ern China, where it originated. In 1853 ^^^ rebels captured Nanking and 
marched on the northern capital, which came near falling into their hands. 
After the war of i860 the French and the English resolved to support the 
Chinese government and aid it in suppressing an insurrection whose possible 
success caused alarm on account of the incalculable consequences it might 
entail. With the aid of French and English officers, especially Admiral 



England and Its Dependencies since 1856 625 

Protet, who was killed at Nan-jao in 1862, and the famous Gordon, who 
was later on to perish at Khartum, the Manchu government succeeded in 
recovering the cities of the Yang-tse basin and finally, in 1864, Nanking, 
where the rebel leader committed suicide. Order was gradually restored, 
but brigandage has never ceased. A revolt of the native Mussulmans of 
Yun-nan seemed to have come to an end in i860; but it broke out again 
and lasted until January, 1873. Another Mussulman insurrection occurred 
in 1865, led to Russia's occupation of Kuldja, and was put down only in 
1871; and there was a third in Chinese Turkestan (1863-5), where an 
independent kingdom was temporarily set up. 

Electoral and Other Reforms in England. — ^The granting of the 
Canadian constitutions of 1840 and 1867 was but one symptom of the 
development of liberal ideas of government in England. The latter year 
saw also the extension of the suffrage in boroughs to householders, a boon 
from which Ireland was excluded. Originally a Liberal measure, it was 
made a law by the Conservative government. But Conservatism in England 
does not really mean reaction — it is only a slower Liberalism. Therefore 
it is that the reforms effected since the close of the Napoleonic wars must 
be credited almost alike to both of the great political parties. With the 
purely practical spirit habitual to Englishmen, both have simply taken 
account of the reality, that is, of the increasing progress of the toiling and 
trading democracy. It is in this way that they have been led, by the facts 
much more than by preconceived theories, from the individualism of 
former times almost to full-fledged socialism. It has been the vast extent 
of its empire, almost as much as any other reason, that has compelled 
England to abandon its old time intolerance. Less than a century ago 
only Anglicans could hold the higher offices there. That exclusivism was 
broken by the repeal of the Test Act in 1828 and the granting of Catholic 
emancipation the following year; but even yet the king, the lord chancellor 
of England and the viceroy of Ireland must belong to the State Church. 
The old aristocratic organization of England was first undermined not so 
much by the Parliamentary reform act of 1832 as by the municipal law 
(1835) of the Melbourne-Russell ministry, which put an end to the exclusi- 
vism of the old municipalities. Acts passed in 1889 and 1894 have given 
to counties and parishes administrative autonomy with elected councils; 
and in 1898 county and district councils similarly chosen were granted 
to Ireland. In 1884 the franchise was extended to all householders, rural 
as well as urban, throughout the United Kingdom, and the following year 
came a rearrangement of Parliamentary districts according to population. 
Before 1853 the civil Service was as subject to political influence as it ever 



40 



626 England and Its Dependencies since 1856 

has been in the United States or any other country, and reform was only 
tentative until 1872, when a secret ballot act put an end to a most scandalous 
system of intimidation at elections. The tendency to State intervention, 
so contrary to the spirit of old England, such at least as it was customary to 
define it, has been manifested by laws, dating back to 1847, and completed 
in 1867 and 1874, limiting the hours of work for women and children. The 
old hindrances on the working of trades unions and the laws favoring 
employers as against workingmen were abolished in 1867 and 1875; and 
the Parliament elected in January, 1906, in which there is a large repre- 
sentation of the labor interests, has pledged itself to further concessions. 
The enormous Liberal majority in this Parliament is due mainly to the 
country's unwillingness to return to the protective tariff system abandoned 
in 1846. The question of common school education, first made compulsory 
by the Forster act of 1870, has frequently agitated the country since then, 
and occupied nearly all the time of the first session of the present Parliament. 

English Legislation for Ireland. — From the time (1800) that it lost 
its own Parliament until quite recently Ireland received very little attention 
from England's lawmakers except in the direction of coercion and oppression. 
By a long series of so called Crimes Acts that were really shackles on polit- 
ical liberty, the British Constitution was suspended there, and the worst 
system of landlordism any country has ever known was given full sway. It 
is this land question that has been the basis of nearly all the discontent in 
that country, and Parliament's failure to remedy the evil has made Ireland 
the weak point of that power apparently so strong. English public opinion 
was intensely hostile to the Irish people, and the leading London newspaper 
rejoiced at the depopulation of their island by famine, eviction and emi- 
gration. Wellington admitted that Catholic emancipation was wrung from 
Parliament only by the threat of civil war; and Gladstone confessed it was 
Fenian outrages that shook the foundations of the Established Church in 
Ireland. The National Education and the Commutation of Tithes acts 
were the only boons granted to Ireland for a long time. O'Connell's 
Repeal movement failed, he died broken-hearted in the second year of the 
great famine, an attempt at insurrection in 1848 proved abortive, and the 
Tenant Right party of 1852 was unable to secure any concession. Lord 
Russell tried in vain to have extended to the farmers of the whole island the 
renting custom prevalent throughout the greater part of the northern 
province, Ulster, a custom by which the tenant was practically part owner 
of the land, but was not protected against excessive rent. The landlord 
and tenant question slumbered on until 1867, when the Irish who had, as 
the London "Times" had expressed it, "gone with a vengeance*' to the 



England and Its Dependencies since 1856 627 

United States, were heard from. Some of them who had served the Union 
cause in our Civil War conceived (1865) the idea of freeing their native coun- 
try by armed force and to that end organized the secret society known as the 
Fenian Brotherhood. Their whole plan was reduced to isolated, yet 
systematic acts of violence, the most famous of which was the partial destruc- 
tion by an explosion of Clerkenwell prison for the purpose of freeing some 
Fenians confined there. These acts were followed by several executions 
and many imprisonments. From these events Gladstone, when he became 
prime minister in 1868, concluded that it was less politic to have recourse to 
coercion than to try to calm men's minds. Though three-fourths Catholic, 
Ireland had an Anglican clergy that represented only one-eighth of the 
population and yet derived its income from the whole of it by tithes and free 
lands, while the Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist clergy had to depend 
on voluntary contributions from their own congregations. The Dises- 
tablishment Act of 1869 put an end to this scandal, but left to the foreign 
Church its edifices and a small portion of its lands. The proceeds from 
the sale of the great bulk of its former property were set aside to meet gov- 
ernment expenditures in Ireland. 

The Irish Land and Home Rule Questions. — Gladstone followed up 
this measure with another reform, or rather small beginning of a reform that 
has developed into an agrarian revolution. By the Land Act of 1870 he 
aimed to extend the Ulster custom to the whole of Ireland, but was only very 
partially successful. He succeeded no better in 1873, nay, even less, when 
he wished to establish in Dublin a university open to Catholics. By this 
time Isaac Butt, a former Irish Conservative, a great lawyer, and the son of 
an Anglican clergyman, had organized a Home Rule party, and the Irish 
voters were protected from landlord dictation by the secret ballot act of 1872. 
Soon after Butt's death the character of the new Irish party was radically 
changed by a new leader sprung from the gentry and landlord class, Charles 
Stewart Parnell, also an Anglican. He became complete master of the 
party in 1880. In the previous year a recently released Fenian prisoner, 
Michael Davitt, the son of a Mayo evicted peasant, had organized a new 
tenant movement which he called the Land League. Parnell's plan in 
Parliament was at first to make the deliberations of the House of Commons 
impossible or ridiculous by almost interminable obstructive debate, and, by 
changing the Irish vote from one English party to another, to play the part 
of an indispensable auxiliary to the party in power. On one occasion he 
compelled the House to sit from four o'clock on Monday afternoon until 
half past nine on Wednesday morning. The first fruit of the Land League 
movement was the adoption of an act of Parliament in 188 1 establishing a 



628 England and Its Dependencies since 1856 

commission to determine rents for fifteen years. To prevent evictions an 
isolation scheme was imagined that soon came to be called Boycotting, from 
the name of its first victim, Captain Boycott, a Connaught land agent, who 
soon left the country. Anyone who became an object of a sentence of this 
sort was put in absolute quarantine by the surrounding population. Then 
some of Parnell's lieutenants, more radical than himself, added to Boycot- 
ting a No-rent manifesto. Gladstone had recourse to coercive measures 
and to decreeing the suppression of the Land League, which, however, was 
kept alive by the women, and was reorganized on a broader basis in 1883 
under the name of the Irish National League. In October, 188 1, two 
months after the passing of the second Land Act, Parnell and several of his 
followers were cast into prison. A reconciliation, however, soon followed 
and Irish prospects were looking bright when, in the spring of 1882, a band 
of ruffianly conspirators murdered in the Phoenix Park at Dublin the chief 
secretary for Ireland, Lord F. Cavendish, and the under-secretary to the 
viceroy. This crime of course broke the understanding with Gladstone, 
and public resentment led to renewed coercion measures, though Parnell 
and his friends had nothing to do with the tragedy. The Irish leader 
afterwards took his revenge by allying himself with the Conservatives and 
overthrowing the Gladstone ministry (1885). Then, unable to come to an 
understanding with them, he returned to Gladstone, who promised him 
Home Rule. The Liberal leader, returning to power in 1886, tried to keep 
his word, but was defeated by the defection of Chamberlain and sixty-nine 
other Liberals, since known as Unionists. Two months later a land pur- 
chase bill was also rejected. In 1890 Parnell became involved in a scandal 
which produced a split in his party that lasted long after his death (October 
6, 1891). A second Home Rule bill introduced by Gladstone in 1893 passed 
the Commons, but was rejected by the Lords. Ireland received county 
and district councils in 1898, and a land purchase act, not altogether satis- 
factory, in 1903. On returning to power in 1906, the Liberal government 
promised it extensive reforms, including a remodeling of the general adminis- 
tration. 

Egypt and the Suez Canal. — Mehemet AH had made himself almost 
independent on the banks of the Nile and had made Egypt a semi-European 
State in civilization. Under him French influence had become preponder- 
ant, and remained so under his successors. Abbas Pasha (1849-54), Moham- 
med Said (1854-63) and Ismail (1863-79); ^^^ ^^^ constructing of the Suez 
canal (begun in 1859 and completed in 1869) also attracted many more 
Frenchmen. Ismail's reign was especially remarkable. He was a civiliz- 
ing and energetic prince. His only error, which at last cost him his throne. 



England and Its Dependencies since 1856 629 

was that he did not know how to count. In 1867 he obtained from the 
sultan, along with the cession of the African shore of the Red Sea, the title 
of khedive (viceroy) and the abolition of the law of seniority (giving the 
succession to the oldest capable member of the family), for which he sub- 
stituted that of direct primogeniture (May, 1866). Mehemet Ali had 
already conquered Nubia (182 1-3) and had Khartoum built to serve him 
as a capital. In that direction Ismail took up his great predecessor's work. 
His rule extended over Darfur and the regions of the upper Nile as far as 
Lake Albert (1870-5). In 1876 the Egyptians took the Aden coast, from 
Berbera to Cape Guardafui. On the other hand, two attempts on Abys- 
sinia ended only in bloody defeats at Goudda Goubbet and Gourra (1875-6). 
But to the expenses caused by these wars were added those required for public 
works and all sorts of profusions. In order to fill his empty treasury, he 
sold to England, after having offered them in vain to France, his shares in 
the Suez canal for twenty million dollars. From every point of view this 
was an excellent bargain for the London cabinet, and for France it proved 
the beginning of the decline of its influence (1875). The following year 
France and England compelled the khedive to place his influence under 
their supervision, for which purpose each appointed a controller. Ismail 
tried to get rid of these two officials. Thereupon England and France 
demanded of the sultan that he depose his viceroy, and the French minister 
of foreign aflPairs wrote to the French consul general at Cairo that he was in 
accord with the English government in inviting the prince to abdicate and 
leave Egypt (1879). Ismail was succeeded by Tewfik (1879-92), who had 
none of his father's violent energy. Accordingly the military party, led 
by Colonel Arabi Pasha, minister of war, soon bestirred itself with the 
object of excluding foreign influence from Egypt. Towards the end of 
1881 the condition of the country was greatly disturbed. Gambatta then 
premier of France, anxious at one and the same time to remain on good 
terms with England and yet to uphold France's rights in Egypt, would like 
to have dual intervention. But early the following year he was overthrown. 
His successor, De Freycinet, after many evasions, at last asked the Chambers 
for credits for the sending of a few thousand men, not to Egypt itself, but to 
the banks of the Suez canal, so as to protect it. The request was refused. 

England's Conquests on the Nile.— On July 11, 1882, the English 
fleet under Admiral Seymour bombarded Alexandria. France's abstention 
gave England a free field. An army of twenty thousand men, commanded 
by General Wolseley, landed in the Suez isthmus and marched from Ismailia 
on Cairo. Arabi tried to stop it at Tel-el- Kebir, but "St. George's cavalry" 
(corruption money) gave Wolseley an easy victory. Arabi surrendered and 



630 England and Its Dependencies since 1856 

was exiled to Ceylon. The victor became Lord Wolseley of Cairo and 
received a very large endow^ment. England then declared, and repeated 
more than once afterwards, that it had gone to Egypt only to restore order 
there, and that it would leave as soon as its task was ended. In reality it 
has kept on taking an ever firmer hold of the country's administration, by 
gradually having the French officials excluded, and has reorganized the 
native army under the direction of its own officers, with an Englishman as 
sirdar (commander-in-chief). Moreover, it maintains a small occupation 
corps which is paid out of the Egyptian treasury. A dispute with Turkey 
(in early summer of 1906) over the boundary between Egypt and Syria 
and Arabia has clearly shown that it means to stay. The agreement of 
December 22, 1888, by which it recognized the neutrality of the Suez canal, 
is valueless in fact, since England, mastering Egypt, is always in a position 
to take no account of it when such a course may be useful to it. These 
results were, moreover, easy to foresee from the beginning. Lord Pal- 
merston had long since declared that as soon as the Suez canal would be 
opened, which event occurred in November, 1869, ten years after the work 
had been begun, the conquest of Egypt would become indispensable. 

The events of which Egypt was the scene had their rebound in the 
Soudan even before the battle of Tel-el-Kebir. A fanatic named Moham- 
med Ahmed had raised the standard of insurrection in Kordofan in 1881, 
and was proclaimed Mahdi ("guided" by God). Taking advantage of 
the khedives having had to strip Nubia of soldiers, he inflicted on the Egypt- 
ian troops under Yusef Pasha defeat at Djebel Tungur (1882), and in the 
following year annihilated another army, commanded by the Englishman 
Hiks, in the Kasghil defiles. Khartoum was then besieged. At the 
khedive's request General ("Chinese") Gordon shut himself up in the 
place, where he met his death in 1885 while aid was slowly coming to him. 
Wolseley, the leader of the relief force, had met with energetic resistance on 
the part of the Soudanese. Coming too late, he retreated to Wady Haifa. 
Lupton Bey, who commanded in the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and Slatin Bey, the 
governor of Darfur, soon succumbed. At that time England could very 
easily have extricated them and reconquered the Soudan; but a calculation 
easy to understand kept it from doing so. Emin Pasha having held out in 
the equatorial province, in 1887 England organized an expedition under 
Stanley professedly to deliver him. Stanley ascended the Congo and its 
affluent, the Aruhwimi, and, after having traversed the virgin forest at the 
cost of great effort, found Emin on the banks of Lake Albert. The pasha 
had no desire to leave his province. Stanley had to compel him to follow 
him to Zanzibar. In this way the equatorial province no longer had a 
master, and England could reconquer it later on, as well as the rest of the 



England and Its Dependencies since 1856 631 

Soudan (1889). Preparations to this effect were begun in Egypt in 1896, 
and two years later an expedition under General Kitchener destroyed the 
Soudanese army near Omdurman (opposite Khartoum), which it also laid 
in ruins. A few years later Colonel Marchand planted the French flag at 
Fashoda, but France had to repudiate his action, and the equatorial prov- 
ince came under Egyptian rule. 

England in South Africa. — Meanwhile England had become involved 
in a very costly war in the southern end of the continent. The closing years 
of the nineteenth century are marked by its extraordinary efforts to form 
an empire there like to those of Canada and Australia. The director of the 
undertaking was Cecil Rhodes, the Napoleon of the Cape, as his fellow- 
countrymen have called him. At first manager of the diamond mines 
syndicate, and then prime minister of Cape Colony, he undertook to extend 
the British dominions to the Zambesi and beyond. Portugal, anxious to 
join its Angola possessions in the west with those of Mozambique in the 
east, had had a reconnoissance of the intervening country made by Major 
Serpa Pinto (1877-8), and then nominally effected annexation. England 
having threatened it with war, Portugal had to yield and give up the king- 
dom of the Matabeles and the Nyassa basin. At the same time it had to 
grant to England the free navigation of the Zambezi and the Shire, as well 
as the right of preemption over Mozambique. As Manica, left at first to 
Portugal, was reputed to be rich in gold mines, Rhodes had the Portuguese 
driven from it, and they had again to yield, in exchange for certain malarial 
territories on the Zambezi (1890-1). The territory thus acquired was turned 
over to the South African Company (commonly known as the Chartered). 
Persuaded that the Boers would yield to intimidation, the British govern- 
ment kept constantly sending fresh regiments to the Cape. Driven to 
extremities, the aged President, assured of the support of the Orange Free 
State, resolved on war (October 11, 1899). The Boers of the Transvaal 
at once invaded Natal, and those of Orange, moving westward, invested 
Kimberly and Mafeking on the 13th. Both sections were generally suc- 
cessful for the next four months. From the 20th to the 30th the Trans- 
vaalers won half a dozen victories over General White's forces, inflicting 
very heavy losses, and shutting them up in Ladysmith, which was isolated 
on November 2. In the west the result was much the same, General 
Gatacre being defeated at Stromberg on December 10, and General Lord 
Methuen routed at Magersfontein on the nth. From December 15 to 
February 7 General Buller, leading an army to relieve Ladysmith, was 
defeated several times on the Tugela River. By this time large British 
reinforcements had arrived, and Lords Roberts and Kitchener had come to 



632 England and Its Dependencies since 1856 

direct the military operation. On February 15 Kimberly was relieved, 
three days later the retreating Boers were defeated by Roberts at Paarde- 
berg, and on the 27th they surrendered. At the same time the siege of 
Ladysmith was abandoned, and the relieving force entered it on the 28th. 
From that time on reverse after reverse befell the Boers. The Orange 
Free State was annexed by England on May 27, and the Transvaal on 
July II. Kruger had fled on May 28 and safely made his way to Europe. 
Desultory resistance was kept up until well on into 1902, so that the \w2Lr 
lasted two and a half years. Since then the former republics have been 
known as the Vaal River and Orange River colonies. The business 
interests of South Africa have not yet recovered from that crisis, and the 
British Parliament in 1906 has had to confront a difficult labor problem 
there. 

Rise of the Australian Commonwealths. — ^While South Africa 
was thus becoming vastly more important to England than its older and 
more recent settlements on the Guinea coast, a new federal State subject to 
it had come into existence. The first Oceanic colony, if we accept the 
Sunda Islands, was that which the English founded at Botany Bay in 1788 
as a penal settlement. In 1835 the peopling of the present colony of Vic- 
toria began, and the next year that of South Australia. In 1843 New 
South Wales ceased to receive convicts, and the same has been the case with 
Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) since 1852. Free immigration dates 
from 1 83 1. Victoria and South Australia have never had any other. But 
it was far from important in the beginning. It was the discovery of gold 
mines (1851) that gave to it so great an impulse. At this date all the Aus- 
tralian colonies had only about four hundred thousand inhabitants, or one- 
tenth of their present population. Six years later there were eight hundred 
and thirty-three thousand. The progress of the country entailed its division 
into large provinces. The gold-bearing region, Victoria, was the first to be 
detached from New South Wales (1851), and then came the turns of South 
Australia and Queensland (1856 and 1859), Though the product of the 
gold mines has fallen off since 1861, yet the different Australian colonies 
have progressed none the less rapidly. There, as elsewhere, gold gave the 
impulse. The immense steppes of the interior, leased to squatters, have 
become the greatest centre of wool production in the world. The mutton 
formerly for the most part lost, is now sent abroad in cold storage even to 
England, which has become Australia's best customer in milk products. 
Vineyards, for which even French vines have been imported, orchards, and 
the cultivation of cereals have acquired a large development. The presence 
of coal (five million tons a year) has fostered navigation and industry. 




>«s'^>« 



England and Its Dependencies since 1856 633 

Northern Queensland has tropical crops, that of the sugar cane especially. 
Tasmania and New Zealand (annexed by the English in 1840, but not 
without wars against the natives, the Maoris) resemble South Australia in 
their products. At a very early stage in their development all the Austra- 
lasian colonies received responsible government. New South Wales in 1854, 
Victoria in 1855, South Australia and Tasmania in 1856, Queensland in 1859 
and New Zealand in 1876. Western Australia, a crown colony until 1890, 
was also made autonomous in that year. It had become relatively pros- 
perous in consequence of the discovery of gold mines (1886), amid which, 
in 1893, there arose in the desert the city of Coolgardie. In 1889 the ques- 
tion first came up of federating the Australasian colonies after the manner 
of the Dominion of Canada. The idea met with considerable difficulties 
as each of the seven colonies had a clearly marked individuality and other 
interests of its own. A popular vote taken in June, 1898, while giving a 
favorable majority, did not produce the desired result, because the new 
republic wanted to free itself from the jurisdiction of.the privy council of the 
crown, a freedom to which the colonies secretary Mr. Chamberlain, was 
opposed. He yielded, however, and the Commonwealth Bill was ratified 
by the Imperial Parliament on July 9, 1900, the inauguration of the Com- 
monwealth of Australia taking place at Melbourne on New Year's Day, 
1901. Owing to failure to agree upon a site for a neutral federal capital, 
that city is still the seat of the new government. New Zealand, with a 
population of nearly a million, an area only a little less than that of the 
British Isles, and the most democratic — almost socialistic — system of gov- 
ernment in the world, has not yet (1906) joined the new confederation. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 



The Dominion of Canada 



French Beginnings in the New World. — So great is the importance, 
even to the people of the United States, of the British possessions in North 
America that they call for treatment separate and distinct from the other 
English colonies. They occupy one-half of the North American continent, 
and for forty years they have formed a semi-independent federation that 
stands midway between the constitutional monarchy of Great Britain and 
Ireland and the republic of the United States, They were acquired by 
England in four distinct instalments — Newfoundland by original claim 
(1585) subsequently disputed by France, Acadia (Nova Scotia and New 
Brunswick) by conquest and treaty, (1713), Canada proper or New France 
in the same way (1763), and British Columbia by treaty (1846). Before 
becoming British, Acadia also embraced the part of the State of Maine 
east of the Kennebec River, and New France contained northern New 
York, Vermont and New Hampshire, western Pennsylvania, and the States 
lying between the Ohio, the Mississippi and the great lakes. Newfound- 
land with Labrador is a British possession separate and distinct from the 
Dominion. It was from them and Cape Britain that England derived its 
priority of claim. John Cabot, a Venetian in the service of Henry VII, and 
his son Sebastian described those coasts in 1497-8, but England neglected 
them for well nigh a century. 

Meanwhile the French had appeared upon the scene. A bold seaman 
of St. Malo in Brittany, Jacques Cartier, entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence 
in 1534, explored its western coast (Gaspe and Chaleurs Bays), saw the 
island of Anticosti, and returned home to tell his wonderful tale. He made 
so favorable an impression that next year he was sent out with a much 
larger equipment. This time he passed Anticosti, established a post at 
Stadacona (Quebec), proceeded to Hochelaga (Montreal) and the Lachine 
rapids, making friends of the Indians everywhere, and returned to Quebec 
to spend the winter there. The severity of that winter killed most of his 
men, and those who survived until the spring, mainly through the kindness 
of the Indians, returned disheartened to France. Five years elapsed before 

634 



The Dominion of Canada 635 

Cartler set out on his third westward voyage, this time under the patronage 
and cooperation of a wealthy nobleman, the Sieur de Roberval, whom 
Francis I made viceroy of New France, with Cartier as captain-general. 
The latter reached Quebec in August, 1541, and began what he meant 
to be a permanent settlement; but again the gloom and disheartening 
privations of winter made him start for home in the spring. Off New- 
foundland he met De Roberval bringing abundant provisions and two 
hundred colonists of both sexes. His superior's orders failed to make 
him turn back. De Roberval went on to his destination only to imitate 
his subordinate after the experiences of two winters. In 1549 he started 
again for the St. Lawrence only to disappear from history without leaving 
a trace. At irregular intervals other Frenchmen subsequently appeared 
upon the scene; but of these enterprises only that of the Marquis de la 
Roche is worthy of notice here. In 1598 Henry IV appointed him viceroy 
of New France, and in the summer of that year he planted on Sable Island 
a colony made up chiefly of convicts. Then going back home, he was 
detained there by an enemy, and when he came again he found his colony 
a ruin. He returned home with the wretched remnant of his expedition. 
Meanwhile an effort had been made to establish a fur-trading colony on 
the St. Lawrence, at Tadoussac, near the mouth of the Saguenay. In 
spite of hardships and sufferings this small settlement was the beginning 
of what was eventually to become a great business. 

The Founding of Port Royal and Quebec— There was now about 
to appear upon the scene the greatest character in early, if not in all, French 
colonial history in America. Samuel Champlain, the son of a prosperous 
fisherman of Brouage, on the Saintonge coast, had been a soldier in the 
war of the League and then a voyager to the West Indies and Mexico. 
Henry IV then brought him into relations with De Chastes, governor of 
Dieppe, who had obtained a commission to found new American settle- 
ments. Leaving Honfleur (1603) in company with Pontgrave, who had 
been the leading spirit of the Tadoussac venture, he passed that now 
deserted outpost, and found the former Indian villages at Stadacona and 
Hochelaga tenantless. On returning to France he prevailed upon the 
king to found a colony in Canada. After the granting of a fresh privilege 
and of the titles of vice-admiral and lieutenant-general in Acadia to another 
Saintongeois, the Huguenot Sieur de Monts, Champlain returned to the 
New World and explored the coasts of the Bay of Fundy. There De 
Monts and Poutraincourt, at the mouth of the St. Croix river, founded a 
colony which they removed next year (1605) to Port Royal (Annapolis in 
Nova Scotia). But dissensions led to the revoking of the charter to De 



636 The Dominion of Canada 

Monts, and the colonists returned to France in 1608. A new charter 
was granted to Poutraincourt (1610), who came back to Port Royal with 
fresh settlers. They were accompanied by a zealous priest, Father La 
Fleche, who converted the whole Indian tribe of the place. Other Jesuits 
soon followed, and some of them began a settlement on Mount Desert 
Island, which was broken up and destroyed by an English expedition from 
Virginia (1613) under Captain Samuel Argall, who soon afterwards laid 
Port Royal also in ruins. In spite of this the new colony struggled on; 
but more trouble soon came to it from an English royal charter granting 
Acadia to a Scotch company under the name of Nova Scotia (1621). 

Champlain had returned to France in 1607, and, then receiving the 
title of lieutenant to De Monts in Canada, he set out on his third voyage. 
Disgusted with the Port Royal dissensions, he went once more to the 
St. Lawrence, where he laid the foundations of the city of Quebec (1608). 
Next year he aided the Algonquins against the Iroquois, whom he defeated, 
and then descended the Richelieu River to the St. Lawrence. Next year 
he fortified himself on the heights overlooking Quebec, inflicted another 
reverse on the terrible Five Nations, and sought in vain for a northwest 
water passage to China. From one of his subsequent visits to Europe 
he brought to Canada a number of Recollect Friars (1615), who began to 
spread the faith among the aborigines of New France. Then, returning 
to his project of discovering the northwest passage, he pushed on as far 
as Lakes Huron and Ontario. In 1620 he received the title of lieutenant- 
general in Canada. But, in spite of all his efforts, the home government 
gave only very weak support to the new colony, which assumed little or 
no development. In 1625 came the first Jesuits, whose missionary labors 
were to occupy so large a place in North American history for the next 
century and a half. Champlain at last obtained some funds in 1626, 
which enabled him to improve the fortifications of Quebec and thus resist 
for a whole year (1628-9) the attacks of the English, to whom he was at 
last compelled to surrender. At the same time Port Royal also fell into 
their hands. But by the treaty of St. Germain (1632), the first European 
agreement concerning American boundaries, England formally acknowl- 
edged France's title to Canada and Acadia, while in return the English 
were not to be molested in Plymouth and Massachusetts. 

Acadia's Vicissitudes — Canada's Slow Growth. — But this treaty 
brought no peace to Acadia. That region continued to be a scene of turmoil 
for almost twenty years. And rival factions had scarcely ceased disputing 
for supremacy there, when an expedition from New England seized the 
country. Then a little later (1655) Cromwell .made it an English colony. 



The Dominion of Canada 637 

but Charles II restored it to France twelve years later. It was for the 
last time seized by England in 1710 and formally ceded by the treaty of 
Utrecht (1713). The French inhabitants took the oath of allegiance to 
England only on condition that they would not be called upon to fight 
against France. But the pro-French actions of some of them provoked 
England to carrying off all the Acadians from their country (1755) and 
scattering them over its various colonies in America. In this way Nova 
Scotia became thoroughly English; but so many of the exiles or their 
descendants returned in after years that there are now over a hundred 
thousand of French blood in the country. 

With the restoration of 1632 a great change came to New France. It 
was nov/ under the control of the Company of the Hundred Associates, 
founded by Richelieu in 1628, with Champlain as a member. He was 
restored to the governorship in 1633, and was working hard for the develop- 
ment of the colony, and especially for the strengthening of Quebec, when 
death overtook him towards the close of 1635. Richelieu had promised 
to send to Canada six thousand settlers within fifteen years, and he gave 
to the Company, as a personal gift from the king, two well-armed battle- 
ships. Yet real material progress was slow. But there was great activity 
in exploration, both by the missionaries and by lay adventurers. "The 
one class was seeking souls and the other furs— but they all traversed new 
regions and encountered the forces of nature in some of its greatest en- 
vironments." Jean Nicolet discovered Lake Michigan in 1634, Fathers 
Chamonot and Brebeuf Lake Erie in 1640, and other adventurers Lake 
Superior in 1659. In 1673 Father Marquette and Jolliet, a fur trader, 
caught the first European's glimpse of the upper Mississippi and paddled 
down the great river as far as the mouth of the Arkansas. Meanwhile, 
Perrot had been the first white man to stand on the site of Chicago, and 
Father Albanel the first European to appear on the shore of Hudson Bay 
(1671). Seven years later Father Hennepin beheld the Falls of St. Anthony 
(Minneapolis), and in 1682 La Salle, who had already made important 
explorations in the west, went down the Mississippi to its mouth. Three 
years later, after failing to found a colony in the vast region to which he 
gave the name Louisiana, he met a violent death at the hand of one of 
his own party. "But his life had once more proved the venturesome 
courage of his race and had aided the work of Cartier and Champlain, of 
devoted priest axid daring voyageur, of fur trader and reckless young 
noble," in opening to France a possible pathway to power and in unrolling 
the map of a vast continent." 

The Colonial Wars Give Canada to England. — France did not 



638 The Dominion of Canada 

follow that pathway. Not only was its colonizing merely a series of trad- 
ing posts, but, after the suppression of the Hundred Associates, the feudal 
system of land tenure was introduced in all its force, and the tilling of 
the soil was thus discouraged. Another setback was the chronic raiding 
of the Iroquois, which had reached acute stages in 1633-45, 1652-4, and 
1 66 1-6. Differences between Governors Dongan of New York and 
Denonville of New France stirred it up again in 1687. When France 
declared war upon William III (1689) it became especially severe and 
lasted with varying intensity until 1700. By this time the French Canadian 
population was not much in excess of eleven thousand, while the English 
colonies had over two hundred thousand inhabitants. But in King 
William's War the French had an able leader in Count Frontenac, who 
inflicted severe blows on New York and New England. Yet the peace 
of Ryswick (1697) made no change in the colonial boundaries. This 
treaty lasted only five years, and the War of the Spanish Succession led 
to what is known as Queen Anne's War in America, where it was a struggle 
of varied failures and successes that at last indicated the line of ultimate 
success in the great struggle for a continent. When it was over Acadia 
was lost to France, but the bordering Isle Saint- Jean (Prince Edward's 
Island) and the Isle Royale (Cape Breton) were left to it; and on the latter 
the French soon built the powerful fortress of Louisburg. Then peace in 
a sort of way lasted until 1740, though meanwhile the New Englanders 
had almost utterly destroyed the powerful pro-French tribe of the Abenakis 
east of the Kennebec (1724). In the American branch of the War for 
the Austrian Succession (King George's War) New Englanders captured 
Louisburg, which, however, to the intense chagrin of the victors, was 
restored to France by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748). But this 
peace was only nominal, especially in America, where both sides were pre- 
paring for the final struggle, and where hostilities again broke out long 
before they were renewed in Europe. It was now the Acadians were 
expelled from Nova Scotia for intriguing with the French authorities at 
Quebec, and the English began hostilities by capturing Fort Beausejour 
on the border of the province. Meanwhile, Duquesne, governor of New 
France, had been strengthening the French position on the Ohio, a pro- 
ceeding which Virginia especially resented. Negotiations in regard to 
that region having failed, the famous struggle known as the French and 
Indian War, described in another chapter of this book, was begun, and 
resulted in the exclusion of France from North America (Treaty of Paris, 
1763). England, of course, did not then foresee how this acquisition was 
to be instrumental in wresting from her the thirteen colonies she herself 
had planted in America. How her determination to make these colonies 



The Dominion of Canada 639 

participate in meeting the cost of the war, how she angered them by grant- 
ing religious liberty to the French Canadians and adding to Canada the 
region between the Ohio and the Mississippi, and how France helped the 
rebellious Americans to win independence, are told in the chapter on the 
**Birth of the United States." 

Canada as a British Dependency. — ^Various causes combined, then, 
to keep the Canadians loyal to England during the War of the American 
Revolution. But not the least potent was the wise administration of Sir 
Guy Carleton, who faithfully applied the religious liberty feature of the 
Quebec Act of 1774, so that England had no warmer or more aggressive 
friend in Canada during that crisis than the Catholic bishop of Quebec. 
But the loss of the Thirteen Colonies did not teach England much in 
colonial administration. Other events were needed to open the eyes of 
the British Parliament to the necessity of granting home rule to her pos- 
sessions beyond sea, and of permitting those of them in North America 
to unite in a practically republican federation; for the British North America 
Act of 1867 gave Canada a constitution partaking at one and the same 
time of English parliamentarism and American federalism. According 
to the letter of the text, Canada is a kingdom, with the king of England 
as its sovereign; but in reality its constitution is that of an almost inde- 
pendent federative republic. In the domain of its internal affairs it prac- 
tically enjoys the fullest autonomy. This result was not attained in a day, 
and as a whole, is not due simply to the mother country's good will. It had 
to be won, sometimes with ardent struggle, by the Canadians themselves. 
Accordingly their parliamentary history is a superb example of energy, 
courage and obstinacy. Here let us briefly point out its essential phases. 

The evolution of the Canadian constitution, from the English con- 
quest until the establishment of the confederation (1867), may be divided 
into four periods, each of which, from the point of view of autonomy and 
liberty, constitutes a marked and decisive progress on that preceding it. 
During the decade following the treaty of Paris (1763-74) the country 
was at first entirely subject to the whim of the administrations. The 
victors had indeed guaranteed to the French Catholics, who then formed 
the vast majority of the population, the free exercise of their religion; 
but, this concession having been made, the conquered race was syste- 
matically kept apart from the government; scarcely even was it represented 
in the council, or purely consultive body that assisted the governor. In 
1774 the Quebec Act, adopted by the British Parliament, made important 
improvements in that veritable rule of conquest. Englishmen and French- 
men were thereafter put on the same footing, the use of the French language 



640 The Dominion of Canada 

was accepted In the official documents, and the guarantees granted to the 
Catholic Church were solemnly confirmed. There was yet, it is true, no 
form of elective representation; but the two races entered side by side 
into the same Legislative Council. England, in short, gave proof of a 
sincere spirit of liberality, and it might be seen that, instead of simply 
seeking to hold the vanquished by force, it showed anxiety to win their 
sympathy. 

The Canadian Constitutions of 1791 and 1840. — In consequence 
of the war of American independence and of the large influx of British 
Loyalists, which was a consequence of it, the number of English Canadians 
increased considerably on the banks of the St. Lawrence, and it became 
possible to give to the colony a larger share in the exercise of its own gov- 
ernment. By the Constitutional Act of 1791 Canada was divided into 
two provinces. Upper and Lower. A governor-general was to reside in 
the French part, and a lieutenant-governor in the less important English 
part; in each of the provinces the law created two Chambers, the one 
appointed by the crown, the other elected. The weak point of the system 
was that the ministry was not responsible to the elective assembly. There 
naturally ensued a chronic rivalry between the deputies chosen by election 
and the ministers appointed by a personal choice. Conflicts were espec- 
ially violent in the French section, where the political question was com- 
plicated with the question of religion and race; and they led at last, in 
1837, to an open rebellion, at the head of which was the famous French- 
Canadian patriot, Papineau. This uprising was, of course, harshly sup- 
pressed, and for two years (i 838-1 840) the French province fell back under 
arbitrary rule. Everyone then felt that a thorough reform was necessary. 
Sent from London on a special mission, Lord Durham, in a report that 
has remained famous, and the adverse criticism on which in England is 
said to have hastened its author's death, earnestly advised the British 
government to grant home rule unreservedly to the colony. After much 
hesitation and delay, his recommendation was adopted, and Durham 
afterwards came to be known as the Father of Canadian Federation. By 
the Union Act of 1840 Upper and Lower Canada were again united, and 
the two elective assemblies were fused into one, each of the two old prov- 
inces sending an equal number of members to it. At first excluded, by 
virtue of an ill-advised conservatism, the French language ere long (1848) 
recovered its official place in the administrative and political life of the 
country. Thereafter, moreover, the tendency was to be towards Liberal- 
ism. Beginning with Lord Elgin's government in 1847, there were to 
be in Canada only responsible ministries, in accordance with the spirit 



The Dominion of Canada 641 

of parliamentary rule. It was under the union of 1840 that the Canadian 
people really served its apprenticeship in constitutional political life. 

The Confederation of 1867. — Twenty-seven years after the Union 
Act the Canadian constitution was broadened still more, and the Con- 
federation, after long and difficult negotiations between the future asso- 
ciates, was ratified by the Imperial ParliamenL, by virtue of the Briiish 
North America Act of 1867, Gradually the feeling of the necessity of 
union between all the provinces made its way, and, in spite of the obstinate 
resistance of certain local interests, unity had succeeded in arising out of 
most extreme diversity. At first composed of only four provinces, namely, 
Quebec (formerly Lower Canada), Ontario (formerly Upper Canada), 
New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the new federation was enlarged in 
1870 by the addition of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories, in 1871 
of British Columbia, and in 1873 of Prince Edward Island. LasJy, it 
was only in 1905 (September i) that the two new provinces of Saskatchewan 
and Alberta, formed out of the Northwestern Territories, entered the 
union as autonomous commonwealths. 

The Federal parliament consists of two houses. The upper, or Senate, 
has eighty-four members at most, appointed by the government, it being 
understood that each province is represented by a certain proportion of 
members. The president of this body is not elected by his colleagues, 
but is named by the executive. The powers of the Canadian senate are 
in principle the same as those of the lower house, except in the matter of 
finance, in which they have neither the right of initiative nor that of amend- 
ment. A mere survival of the past, like the British House of Lords, this 
assembly has, in the direction of affairs, only a secondary part. The 
House of Commons is the real centre of legislative power. Chosen by the 
same electors as the provincial assemblies, it comprises two hundred and 
thirteen members, the province of Quebec being always entitled, by pro- 
vision of the British North America Act, to sixty-five. The other prov- 
inces are represented in proportion to its and their population, according 
to each decennial census. It is the House of Commons that votes the 
budget and makes and unmakes ministries in accordance with the wishes 
of the majority of its members. Both French and English are official 
languages in the Ottawa Parliament, each orator being privileged to speak 
in whichever language he pleases, and official documents being printed 
in both. Each province has its own legislature for the transaction of 
purely local business, and only two of these bodies have two houses, 
namely, those of Quebec and Nova Scotia. The Dominion is ruled by 
a governor-general in the king's name, and in each province he is repre- 

41 



642 The Dominion of Canada 

sented by a lieutenant-governor, who presides over the provincial legis- 
lature. Thus there appears to be real union of the various parts of the 
Confederation, since they possess autonomy, but not independence. Only 
about sixty thousand in 1760, according to the census of 1901 the popula- 
tion of Canada was 5,371,000, of whom 2,229,000 were Catholics. By 
far the most populous province is Ontario, which is also the most fertile 
and prosperous. There are fully three quarters of a million French 
Canadians in the United States. 

Parties and Policies of the Dominion. — Is the time at hand when 
racial and religious prejudice will cease to be a factor in Canadian politics .? 
It is difficult to say, but indications point that way. The assumed supe- 
riority of the British over the French element of the population in former 
years gave rise to much trouble in Canada and to a great extent controlled 
the affiliation with political parties. In spite of the fact that the people 
of Lower Canada were as loyal to England in the War of 18 12 as they had 
been in that of the Revolution, they continued to be looked down upon 
by their English neighbors, who persisted in treating them as a conquered 
race. It was this condition that produced Papineau's rebellion in 1837. 
Though that uprising was easily suppressed, yet it led to a salutary change. 
And the agent of that change was an English radical, the Earl of Durham, 
who, sent out as special commissioner to investigate conditions in 1838, 
recommended in his report the union of the two provinces on perfectly 
equal terms. Then came a period of probation lasting for a quarter of 
a century; and when the British North America Act went into effect (1867) 
it found men trained and competent to manage the affairs of the new 
Dominion. The first premier. Sir John A. Macdonald, long the Con- 
servative leader in Ontario, began to guide the ship of State with a coali- 
tion crew; but his ministry soon became wholly Conservative, and his 
party held the reins of power for nearly thirty years with but one inter- 
ruption. British Columbia had come into the Dominion only on con- 
dition that it would be favored with a transcontinental railroad. Each 
of two rival companies wanted to build the Canadian Pacific; and the 
revelation of gross corruption in connection with the undertaking (in the 
latter part of 1873) overthrew the Macdonald ministry and gave the Liberals 
with Alexander Mackenzie as premier, control for four years. Mac- 
donald returned to power in 1878, and his party, supported by the great 
bulk of the French, staid there for eighteen years more. Meanwhile, 
the Liberal party was being reorganized by a young leader of French 
blood and Catholic faith who has since risen to world-wide fame as Sir 
Wilfrid Laurier. He had rid his party of radicalism and thus won the 



The Dominion of Canada , 643 

confidence of his coreligionists, so that the former Conservative province 
of Quebec has become Liberal, and with increased majorities has kept 
him in power as Dominion premier since 1896. 

Perhaps the most serious crisis he has had to meet was the violent 
outburst of indigination throughout the Vv'hole Dominion over the decision 
regarding the Alaska boundary. There had been other boundary disputes 
with the United States, such as that of Maine settled in 1842 and that of 
Oregon Territory in 1846, when the disappointment was on the other 
side. Our government's abandonment of trade reciprocity in 1866, and 
again after a brief period in our own day, as well as the fisheries disputes 
in both eastern and western waters, only served to strengthen Canadian 
loyalty to England. But the verdict of the special commission (October, 
1903), shutting out northern British Columbia from the Pacific Ocean 
was a severe strain upon it, by reason of the fact that the deciding vote 
was cast by the chief justice of England; and it was not Lord Alverstone 
alone, but the British government itself that was subjected to unqualified 
censure. Some of Canada's public men went so far as to declare that 
the Dominion must hereafter negotiate its own treaties. It has not yet 
had opportunity to make the experiment. 



CHAPTER XXXIX 



The United States before the Civil War. 



Original Political Conditions in the States. — Wh le civil politic::! 
and religious liberties were being developed in the Old World as described 
in the last few chapters, the Republic in the New that had set the example 
for them had been advancing from insignificance to the first rank among 
the world's great nations. Yet in the beginning, and for long aftenvards, 
it was not the home of freedom, libenies and privileges familiar to the 
present generation. Many of the States retained limitations that had 
existed in the colonies. There were close restrictions on the suffrage, the 
electorate being confined to a small body whose ownership of real estate and 
whose religious opinions agreed with the ideas existing in colonial times. 
The amount of property each voter was required to possess difiered in 
different commonwealths. In New Jersey he had to own fifty pounds' 
wonh, in Maryland and the Carolinas an estate of fifty acres, in Delaware 
a freehold estate of known value, in Georgia an estate often dollars or must 
follow a mechanic trade; in New York, if he would vote for a member of the 
Assembly, he must possess a freehold of twenty pounds, and a hundred 
pounds in order to vote for State senator. Massachusetts required an 
elector to own a freehold estate worth sixty pounds or to possess an annual 
income of three pounds. Connecticut was satisfied if his estate was of the 
yearly value of seven dollars, and Rhode Island required him to own the 
value of one hundred and thirty-four dollars in land. Pennsylvania, before 
1790, required him to be a freeholder, but in that year joined New Hamp- 
shire and Vermont in being satisfied with the payment of a poll-tax. The 
number of electors was still funher limited bv the religious opinions required 
of them. The early removal of religious disabilities in some of the States 
has already been noted; but still in New Jersey, New Hampshire, \ ermont, 
Connecticut and South Carolina no Catholic could vote. Mar)b.nd and 
Massachusetts permitted those of the Christian religion to exercise the 
franchise. North Carolina required her electors to believe in the Divine 
authority of the Scriptures and her office-holders, in the truths of the 
Protestant religion. Delaware was satisfied with a belief in the Trinity 

644 



The United States before the Civil War 645 

and the inspiration of the Bible. Pennsylvania allowed those otherv/ise 
qualified to vote who believed in one God, in the rev.ard of good and the 
punishment of evil, and in the inspiration of the Scriptures. In New- 
York, Virginia, Georgia and Rhode Island the Protestant faith was pre- 
dominant, but Catholics otherwise qualified could vote. The property 
qualifications were higher for those who sought office. To be governor 
of New Jersey or South Carolina, a man's real and personal property 
had to amount to ten thousand dollars, in North Carolina to one thousand 
pounds, in Georgia to two hundred and fifty pounds or two hundred and 
fifty acres of land; in New Hampshire to five hundred pounds, in Maryland 
to ten times as much, in New York to a hundred pounds, in Massachusetts 
to a thousand pounds. By our present ratio the population of the States 
in 1787 would represent six hundred thousand voters, yet less than one- 
fourth of that number possessed the electoral franchise. It is evident 
that at the time American liberty was won American liberty had only 
begun. Gradually was the franchise greatly extended during the first 
half of the nineteenth century. By 1861 the property qualification had 
disappeared in all of them but Rhode Island, which clung to it for another 
score or so of years. The religious tests had vanished thirty years earlier 
except in New Hampshire for office-holders. 

The United States in 1801. — By the time the nineteenth century 
dawned the new Republic had been greatly strengthened, especially by the ■ 
careful administration of its finances under the direction of Alexander 
Hamilton. Its territory extended from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and 
from the great lakes to Florida. Florida, then held by Spain, included a 
strip of land extending to the Mississippi; and west of that river was 
Louisiana, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the sources of the great 
river and to those of the Missouri in the Rocky Mountains; and as Louisiana 
originally a French possession, ceded to Spain in 1763, had just been given 
back (1800) to France, our country was cut off from the Gulf by domains 
belonging to foreign countries. The area of the new nation was over 
827,000 square miles, and it contained a population of more than 5,308,000, 
as against less than four millions in 1790. To the original thirteen states 
three new ones had been added, namely, Vermont (from New York and 
New Hampshire, 1791), Kentucky (from Virginia, 1792), and Tennessee 
(from North Carolina, 1796); and Ohio was soon (1803) to be formed out 
of the eastern part of the northwest territory. 

Spain had held her North American possessions in a manner that 
proved deeply annoying to the American settlers in the west, to whom free 
navigation of the Mississippi was of great and growing importance. The 



646 The United States before the Civil War 

free use of that natural commercial outlet to the sea was forbidden by Spain, 
which was so determined to retain for herself the exclusive navigation of the 
great river that in 1786 the new American republic withdrew all claim upon 
it, agreeing to withhold any demand for navigation there for twenty-five 
years. Nor did France's acquisition of Louisiana improve the situation. 
This action on the part of the United States was soon shown to be hasty and 
unwise. The west filled up with unexpected rapidity, and the settlers on 
the eastern bank of the Mississippi soon began to insist on free use of 
its waters, their irritation growing so great that the United States vainly 
sought in 1793 to induce Spain to open the stream to American craft. This 
purpose was attained, however, in 1795, when a treaty was made which 
opened the Mississippi for a term of three years, with permission for Ameri- 
cans to use New Orleans as a free port of entry and place goods there on 
deposit. Five years later, as stated above, Spain retroceded Louisiana to 
France. Towards the close of 1801 Napoleon Bonaparte, then at the head 
of French affairs, sent out a fleet an ! an army ostensibly to act against San 
Domingo, but really to establish at New Orleans a base of hostilities in 
the New World. 

The Louisiana Purchase and Its Importance. — ^When the secret of 
this treaty leaked out there was great excitement in the United States; and 
the irritation was increased by a Spanish order withdrawing the right of 
• deposit of American merchandise at New Orleans and failing to substitute 
any other place, as the treaty of 1795 provided. So strong was the feeling 
that a Pennsylvania senator introduced a resolution into Congress authorizing 
President Jefferson to call out fifty thousand militia and occupy New 
Orleans. But Congress wisely decided that it would be better and cheaper 
to buy it than to fight for it, and in January, 1803, made an appropriation 
of two million dollars for its purchase. Thereupon the President sent 
James Monroe to Paris to cooperate with the United States minister to 
France (Robert R. Livingston) in the proposed purchase. Fortunately for 
the United States, war was again imminent between France and England, 
and Napoleon felt he could not long hold his American acquisition against 
the British navy. Not only New Orleans, but the whole of Louisiana, 
would probably be lost to him, and money for his wars was more important 
to him than wild lands beyond sea. To his great surprise the American 
minister was, therefore, asked to make an offer for the whole territory. 
Next day (April 12) Monroe reached Paris, and the two commissioners 
earnestly debated the offer. They had no authority to close with such a 
proposition, but by the time they could receive instructions from Washington 
the golden opportunity might be lost. But there was no time to wait for 



The United States before the Civil War 647 

mail advices, and they took it upon themselves to offer ten million dollars. 
Napoleon asked much more, and the bargain was closed at fifteen millions, 
one-fourth of the sum to be paid to American citizens who held claims 
against Spain. A treaty to this effect was signed on April 30. England 
was prevented from hemming us in on the west. On hearing of the trans- 
action, Spain filed a protest, based on a secret condition of her cession of 
Louisiana to France to the effect that the latter should not part with that 
region. Napoleon, of course, paid no attention to Spain. Jefferson highly 
approved of the purchase, though it was not in keeping with his party's 
principles. He called an extraordinary session of the senate to consider and, 
if possible, ratify it. In spite of vigorous opposition, based on utter igno- 
rance of the value of the territory involved as well as on constitutional grounds, 
it was approved in October, and Louisiana thus easily and cheaply added 
about 920,000 square miles to the territory of the United States, thus more 
than doubling the area of the country. 

The Lewis and Clark Exploring Expedition. — The Louisiana 
wilderness of that day is now divided up betv/een thirteen States of the 
Union that include much of the most productive agricultural land in the 
country. But almost nothing was known of it then. Hunters and trappers 
had penetrated its wilds, but the stories told by them had been distorted out 
of all semblance of truth. So as to ascertain the facts the President resolved 
to send out an exploring expedition. The men chosen for this purpose were 
William Clark and Merriwether Lewis, both army officers well adapted for 
so arduous an undertaking. Leaving St. Louis, then little more than a 
village, in the summer of 1803, they spent the winter near the mouth of the 
Missouri. The company included nine Kentuckians used to frontier life, 
fourteen soldiers, two Canadian boatmen, nn interpreter, a hunter, and a 
negro boatman, besides a corporal and guard with nine boatmen engaged 
to accompany the expedition as far as the territory of the Mandans. While 
the greater part of the command embarked in a fleet of three large canoes, 
the hunters and packhorses followed a parallel route along the shore. In 
the spring of 1804 the ascent of the Missouri was begun, and in the autumn 
the hunting grounds of the Sioux were reached. There they spent an 
intensely cold winter, and in April, 1805, made a fresh start, still up the 
Missouri, whose great falls they reached in June. When further navigation 
was impossible, Captain Lewis with three companions left the expedition 
in camp and set out on foot toward the mountains looking for the friendly 
Shoshones. On August 12 he crossed what he rightly concluded to be the 
dividing ridge, for the stream he saw there danced out towards the setting 
sun. Then he returned to the camp, bringing with him some of the Sho- 



648 The United States before the Civil War 

shones. The v/hole expedition then set out as indicated, in October reached 
the Kaskaskia river, and in canoes descended the Columbia, upon the south 
bank of which, four hundred miles from their starting point upon that 
stream, they spent the winter of 1805-6. Much of the return journey was a 
fight with hostile Indians. The leaders of the expedition reached Washing- 
ton while Congress was in session, and grants of land were immediately 
made to them and their subordinates. Captain Lewis was rewarded 
also with the governorship of Missouri Territory, while Clark was appointed 
brigadier-general for the territory of Upper Louisiana, and in 1813 governor 
of Missouri. When this Territory became a State, he was made superin- 
tendent of Indian affairs, which oifice he held until his death. 

Causes of the War of 1812. — While the nation was thus expanding 
peacefully, it forgot to learn the lesson: In time of peace prepare for war. 
War was to come out of England's maritime arrogance in her desperate 
struggle against Napoleon. In waging it the United States stood for a 
sound, strong and universally beneficial principle, that of the rights of 
neutral nations in time of war as to carrying non-contraband goods to the 
seaports of the belligerents. But the cause which appealed most strongly 
to the patriotic feelings of the common people was unquestionably the 
impressment by Great Britain of sailors from American ships. Great 
Britain was straining every nerve to strengthen her already powerful navy, 
and the press-gang was constantly at work in English seaports. With a 
large contempt for the naval weakness of the United States, she assumed the 
right to stop our merchant vessels on the high seas, to examine their crews, 
and to take as her own any sailors she saw fit to claim. To such an extent 
was this insult to our flag carried that our government had the record of 
about forty-five hundred cases of impressment from our ships between 
1803 and 1810; and when the war of 18 1 2 broke out the number of American 
sailors serving against their will on British war vessels was variously com- 
puted to be from six to fourteen thousand. The greatest outrage of all, 
and one which stirred the blood of Americans to the fighting point, was the 
capture in 1806 of an American naval vessel, the Chesapeake, by the far 
more powerful British man-of-war, the Leopard. Three Americans were 
killed and eighteen wounded; yet a very long time elapsed before England 
ungraciously apologized for the outrage, which natural y rankled and did 
as much as anything else to fan anti-British feeling in America. The 
interference with American commerce was also a serious threat to the cause 
of peace. Both Great Britain and France had adopted in practice the 
most extreme theories of non-intercourse between neutral and hostile 
nations, and treated the neutral carrying on trade with an enemy as an 




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The United States before the Civil War 649 

enemy itself. They even forbade America to carry merchandise from 
their colonies to its ports (1807). Then Congress adopted a non- 
intercourse (embargo) act, aimed chiefly, and wholly after 18 10, against 
England. It was England's refusal to accept our conditions that finally 
led to the declaration of war. By a curious chain of circumstances 
it happened, however, that between the time when Congress declared 
war (June 18, 18 12) and the date when the news of this declaration was 
received in England, the latter country had already revoked her famous 
"Orders in Council." 

Early Incidents of the War of 1812. — It is peculiarly gratifying to 
American pride that this war, undertaken in defence of our maritime 
interests and to uphold the honor of our flag upon the high seas, resulted in a 
series of brilliant naval victories. It was not indeed at first thought that 
this would be chiefly a naval war. President Madison was at one time 
strongly inclined to keep our vessels in port; but other counsels prevailed, 
and it was well they did, for most of our fighting on land was anything but 
creditable. At the outset it was decided to attack England through her 
Canadian colonies, but the plan of campaign failed wretchedly in execution. 
The first year of the war on land showed nothing but reverses and fiascos. 
One of the complaints which led to the war was that the Indian tribes had 
been incited against our settlers by the Canadian authorities and had been 
promised aid from upper Canada, largely settled by American Loyalists 
after the Revolution. It is certain that after war was declared British 
officers not only used Indians as their allies, but, in some instances at 
least, paid boun:ies for the scalps of Americans. The Indian war phnned 
by Tecumseh had just been put down by General (afterwards President) 
Harrison. The strength of our campaign against Canada was dissipated in 
an attempt to hold Fort Wayne, Fort Harrison and other garrisons against 
Indian attacks. Still more disappointing was the complete failure of the 
attempt under General Hull to advance from Detroit into Canada. He was 
easily driven back and surrendered without firing a gun. The mortification 
following this land campaign was forgotten in the joy at the splendid naval 
victories of the same year. On August the Constitution ("Old Ironsides"), 
under Captain Isaac Hull, attacked and destroyed the Guerriere. The 
chagrin of the English public at this unexpected result was changed to 
amazement and vexation when there followed no less than six combats of 
the same duel-like character, in all of which the American vessels were 
victorious. In the first the Wasp defeated the Frolic, which was convoying 
a fleet of merchantm.en. It in no vvise detracted from the glory of this 
victory that both victor and prize were soon captured by a British man-of- 



650 The United States before the Civil War 

war of immensely superior strength. Following this action, Commodore 
Stephen Decatur, in the frigate United States, defeated the Macedonian and 
brought her into New York harbor, on New Year's Day, 18 13. With like 
result the Constitution, now under Commodore Bainbridge, attacked the 
Java. Other naval combats resulted, in the great majority of cases, in the 
same way. When the second year of the war closed our little navy had 
captured twenty-six warships, armed with five hundred and sixty guns, 
while it had lost seven ships, carrying a hundred and nineteen guns. During 
the same period terrible devastation was wrought on British commerce by 
American privateers. 

The Second Period of the War. — The naval combats thus far men- 
tioned were nearly always of single vessels. For battles between fleets we 
must turn from the ocean to the great lakes, where the British had the 
advantage of being able to reach them by the St. Lawrence, while our lake 
navies had to be constructed after the war began. One such little navy had 
been built at Presq' He (Erie), and was put in command of Oliver H. Perry. 
Having had his fleet dragged over the bar, with ten small vessels, fifty-five 
guns, and four hundred men, he attacked Captain Barclay, who had six 
ships, sixty-five guns, and about the same number of men as Perry, who won 
a complete and decisive victory; all six of the enemy's ships were captured, 
and the control of Lake Erie was fully assured. That of Lake On::ario 
had already been won by Commodore Chauncey. Perry's memorable 
victory opened the way for important land operations by General Harrison. 
Marching from Detroit, he won the battle of the Thames, in which Tecum- 
seh was killed, and drove the British from that part of Canada. Previous 
to this the land campaigns had been marked by a succession of minor 
victories and defeats. The Indians had beaten and massacred the Ameri- 
cans at Raisin River, but had captured York (Toronto). Fort George 
had also been captured and an attack on Sackett's Harbor repulsed; but 
an expedition against Montreal became a complete fiasco, owing to jealousy 
between generals. On sea, however, Captain Lawrence, on the Hornet, 
completely defeated the English brig Peacock, the Enterprise captured the 
Boxer, and other equally notable victories were reported; but Lawrence, 
falling mortally wounded, lost the Chesapeake to the Shannon. In the 
latter part of the war, Napoleon's power being broken, England was 
enabled to send large reinforcements to America. But before they came 
our army had won greater credit and had shown more military skill than in 
its earlier operations. Along the Niagara River active fighting had been 
going on. At Chippewa, Fort Erie and Lundy's Lane the troops, under 
Generals Winfield Scott and Brown, had more than held their own against 



The United States before the Civil War 651 

odds. Even more encouraging was the total defeat of the plan of nvasion 
from Canada undertaken by the now greatly strengthened British forces. 
They numbered twelve thousand and were supported by a fleet on Lake 
Champlain. In Plattsburg Bay this fleet was utterly routed by an American 
flotilla under Commodore MacDonough, and the English army beat a rapid 
and undignified retreat to Canada. 

Close and Results of the War of 1812. — Meanwhile expeditions of 
considerable size were directed by the British agiiinst our chief southern 
cities. One of these brought General Ross with five thousand men into 
Chesapeake Bay. Washington had been left unprotected; Ross marched 
upon it, defeated an inferior force of raw militia at Bladensburg, seized the 
city and destroyed a great part of it, including the public buildings. A 
similar attempt upon Baltimore was less successful. The people of that city 
hastily threw up extensive fortifications, and the British fleet was finally 
driven off after a severe bombardment of Fort McHenry. A still larger 
expedition soon afterwards landed on the Louisiana coast and marched to 
attack New Orleans, where General Andrew Jackson was in command. 
He had already distinguished himself by putting down a rising of the Creek 
Indians incited by the English. General Pakenham, in command of five 
thousand of Wellington's veterans, expected as easy a victory as that of 
Ross at Washington. But Jackson had summoned to his aid the stalwart 
frontiersmen of Kentucky and Tennessee. For fortifications he made 
liberal use of cotton bales, while Pakenham employed sugar barrels for the 
same purpose, but both had to be replaced by earthworks. Oddly enough, 
this final battle (January 8, 1815), really the most important of the war, 
was fought after the treaty of peace had been signed. The British were 
repulsed again and again. Pakenham himself was killed, together with 
many of his officers and seven hundred of his men. Of the Americans 
only a few men were slain. The treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent 
on December 24. It said nothing about the rights of neutral ships or the 
impressment of American sailors, but it is significant that England never 
again has had recourse to it. The chief stipulations were the mutual 
restoration of territory and the appointment of a commission to determine 
our northern boundary line. The truth is that both sides were tired of the 
war; the circumstances that had led to England's aggressions no longer 
existed; both countries were suff'ering enormous commercial loss to no avail; 
and, above all, the United States had emphatically justified by its deeds its 
claim to an equal place in the council of the nations. If Great Britain had 
treated our demands with courtesy and justice, instead of with insolence; 
if, in short, international comity had taken the place of international ill 



652 The United States before the Civil War 

temper, the war might have been avoided altoge her. Its undoubted 
benefits to us were incidental rather than direct; for, though not formal.y 
recognized by treaty, the rights of American seamen and of American ships 
were in fact no longer infringed upon by Great Britain, though her ill-will 
against us was again to be shown during the great crisis of our Civil War. 

How Florida Was Acquired. — During these troubles with England we 
were also having troubles with Spain, which led to our second acquisition 
of territory. The Spanish colony of Florida was divided into two sections, 
Eastern and Western, the latter extending from the Appalachicola to the 
Mississippi, and cutting off the Americans of upper Georgia and Alabama 
from access to the Gulf. Spain established a custom-house at the mouth of 
the Alabama River, and levied heavy duties on goods to and from the country 
up that stream. The United States was not willing to acknowledge Spain's 
right to Western Florida. It claimed that the Louisiana purchase included 
the region east from the Mississippi to the Perdido, and in 18 10 a force 
was sent into that region to take possession of it, the city of Mobile excepted. 
That city was occupied by General Wilkinson in 18 13, leaving to Spain 
only the country between the Perdido and the Atlantic Ocean, the present 
State of Florida. Throughout these years the purpose had grown in 
the southern States and Territories to gain this section of the Spanish 
dominion as well as western Florida. On January 15 and March 3, 181 1, 
the United States Congress passed in secret, as became known only in 18 18, 
acts authorizing the President to take "temporary possession" of East 
Florida. The commissioners appointed under these acts stirred up insurrec- 
tion in the coveted territory, and, when President Madison refused to sustain 
them, Georgia formally declared Florida needful to its own peace and welfare 
and practically declared war on its own private account. But its expedition 
against Florida came to naught. In 18 14 General Jackson, then in com- 
mand of the United States forces at Mobile, made a raid on Pensacola and 
drove out a British force that had been placed there. He afterwards restored 
the place to the Spaniards and retired. Four years later, during the 
Seminole war, annoyed by Spanish aid given to the Indians, he again raided 
Eastern Florida, captured St. Marks and Pensacola, hanged two Englishmen 
who were suspected of aiding the Seminoles, and again showed that Florida 
was at the mercy of the United States. Jackson's action was unauthorized 
by the government and produced hostile irritation in England. But by 
this time it had become quite evident to Spain both that it could not hold 
Florida in peace, and that the colony was of very little value to it. Conse- 
quently it agreed to sell the peninsula to the United States for five million 
dollars, and the treaty to that effect was signed on February 22, 1819. By 



The United States before the Civil War 653 

this treaty Spain also gave up all claim to the country in the far northwest 
from the Rocky Mountains boundary of the Louisiana purchase to the 
Pacific. The purchase of Florida added nearly sixty thousand square 
miles to the area of the United States, and the way cleared for the subsequent 
acquisition of the vast Oregon region. 

Acquisition of the Oregon Country. — Yet it was only in 1846 that 
this other large section of territory was added to that of the United States. 
The Louisiana purchase ran indefinitely westward, but came to be consid- 
ered as bounded in that direction by the Rocky Mountains, Spain retaining 
a shadow of claim over the country west of that range until abandoning it 
by the Florida treaty, when the broad Oregon country was left without an 
owner. The United States, however, might have set up a claim to it, the 
claim of discovery and exploration. Captain Grey, sailing the Columbia, 
carried the starry flag to its coast in 1792, and was the first to sail up its 
great river, which he named after his vessel. In 1805, as already recorded, 
the country was traversed and explored by Lewis and Clark. In 181 1 John 
Jacob Astor founded the settlement of Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia, 
and sent hunters in search of furs through the back country. And in 
18 19 the vague right over the country held by Spain was transferred by 
treaty to the United States. The claim thus established was not followed 
up because it was not thought worth the trouble. Then, after the Hudson 
Bay Company had gained control of Astoria, and had begun to fill the 
country with fur hunters. Dr. Marcus Whitman, a missionary physician 
among the Columbia Indians, revealed the value of that great region. He 
discovered that the Hudson Bay Company was trying to bring permanent 
settlers there and to set up a claim for Great Britain. At once, in the dead 
of winter, he made the entire journey to Washington on horseback, and 
strenuously urged our government to lay claim to the country. Finding 
our statesmen hard to interest, he went among the people, told them of the 
beauty of the country and the fertility of its soil, and on his return to it 
(1843) took with him an emigrant train of nearly a thousand persons. This 
settled the question. The new comers formed a government of their own. 
Others followed and the question of ownership was practically settled. In 
1845 there were seven thousand Americans in Oregon and only a few 
British. A claim was made on the whole western region as far as Lat. 
54°4o', the southern boundary of Russian America, and the political war- 
cry of that year was "fifty-four forty or fight." In 1846 the question was 
settled by treaty with Great Britain, the disputed country being divided at 
the forty-ninth parallel, the northern portion becoming British Columbia 
and the southern Oregon Territory. In this way it was that the United 



654 The United States before the Civil War 

States spanned the continent, establishing its dominion from ocean to ocean. 
The tract acquired measured about 55,000 square miles and now forms the 
States of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. About the same time the Maine- 
Canada boundary was adjusted. 

The Annexation of Texas leads to War. — In the decade with which 
we are now concerned, the area of our country grew with extraordinary 
rapidity, the final acquisition of Oregon having been almost contempora- 
neous with that of Texas and closely followed by that of California and New 
Mexico. In 1821 Texas had become one of the States of the Mexican 
republic. But American frontiersmen, of the kind calculated to foment 
trouble, soon made their way across the borders, increasing in numbers as 
the years passed on, until Texas had a considerable population of United 
States origin. Efforts were made to purchase this country from Mexico, a 
million dollars being offered in 1827 and five million in 1829, though the 
country had really been included in the Louisiana purchase, but had been 
overlooked. These offers were declined, and in 1833 Texas adopted a 
constitution as a State of Mexico. Two years later Santa Anna, the 
president of Mexico, was made dictator, and all State constitutions were 
abolished. Irritated by this, the American inhabitants declared the 
independence of Texas in 1836, and after a short war, marked by instances 
of savage cruelty on the part of the Mexicans, gained freedom for that 
country. Texas was organized as a republic, but its people soon applied 
for annexation to the United States, which was not granted until 1845, 
making the twenty-eighth State of the Union. Those admitted since Ohio 
were Louisiana (1812), Indiana (1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), 
Alabama (1819), Maine (1820), Missouri (1821), Arkansas (1836), Mich- 
igan (1837), and Florida (1845). Texas added 376,133 square miles to 
our territory, but its northwestern part was ceded to the Federal Govern- 
m^ent, and is now divided between several States. Mexico had never 
acknowledged the independence of the "Lone Star Republic," and was 
deeply dissatisfied at its acquisition by the United States, which it looked 
upon as an unwarranted interference in its private affairs. The strained 
relations between the two countries were aggravated by a dispute as to the 
western boundary of Texas, both countries claiming the strip of land between 
the Rio Grande and the Nueces rivers. War arose in consequence of this 
ownership dispute. In the summer of 1845 President Polk directed General 
Zachary Taylor to proceed to Corpus Christi, at the mouth of the Nueces, 
and gave him orders the following spring to march to the Rio Grande. 
Then the Mexicans claimed that their territory had been invaded, ordered 
Taylor to retire, and on his refusal sent a body of troops across the river. 



The United States before the Civil War 655 

The Mexican War's Chief Incidents. — Both countries were ripe for 
war, and both had taken steps to bring it about. A hostile meeting took 
place on April 24, with some loss to both sides. On receiving word of this 
by telegraph the President sent a message to Congress, saying: "Mexico has 
passed the boundary of the United States, and shed American blood upon 
American soil — War exists, notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it." 
Then he called for fifty thousand volunteers. The declaration of war was 
dated May 13, 1846. Several days earlier severe fights had taken place at 
Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, on the disputed territory. The Mexicans 
were defeated, and withdrew across the Rio Grande. They were quickly 
followed by Taylor, who took possession of the town of Matamoras. The 
plan of war laid out- embraced an invasion of Mexico from four quarters. 
Taylor was to march southward from the Rio Grande, General Scott to 
advance on the capital by way of Vera Cruz, General Philip Kearney to 
invade New Mexico, and California was to be attacked by a naval expedition, 
already despatched. Taylor was quick to act after receiving reinforcements. 
He advanced on September 5, and on the 9th reached the strongly fortified 
Monterey, which the Americans took by storm. Some months passed 
before Taylor was in a condition to march again, his force being much 
depleted, to strengthen Scott. In February, 1847, he took the field once 
more, and on the 23d, with five thousand men defeated twenty thousand 
Mexicans in a ten hours' battle at Buena Vista, a short distance south of 
Monterey. Meanwhile General Scott had sailed down the Gulf of Vera 
Cruz, which was taken after a brief bombardment. Thence an overland 
march of two hundred miles was made to the Mexican capital, whose 
vicinity Scott reached with a force of eleven thousand to find its approaches 
strongly fortified and guarded by thirty thoiisand men. Yet he pushed 
on almost unchecked. Victories were won at Contreras and Churubusco, 
the defences surrounding the city were taken, and on September 13 the most 
formidable of them all, the strong hill fortress of Chapultepec, was carried 
by storm. This ended the war in that quarter. Next day the city of 
Mexico was in the hands of the Americans. New Mexico had been invaded 
and occupied by General Kearney, who had taken Santa Fe after a thousand 
miles* march overland. Before the fleet sent to California could reach there. 
Captain John C. Fremont, in charge of a surveying party in Oregon, had 
invaded that country. Several conflicts with the Mexicans, in which he was 
aided by the fleet, and later by Kearney, gave him control of that great 
country destined almost to double the wealth of the United States. On 
February 2, 1848, a treaty of peace was signed at Guadalupe Hidalgo, whose 
terms gave the United States an accession of territory (California, Arizona, 
New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada) that was destined to prove of 



656 The United States before the Civil War 

extraordinary value. Five years later it v^as slightly enlarged by the Gads- 
den purchase. 

Our Troubles with the Barbary States. — In the early years of our 
Republic there lay along the Mediterranean coast of Africa four States, 
Morocco, Algeria, Tunis and TripoH, extending from west to east a distance 
of eighteen hundred miles. For centuries these powers had maintained a 
state of semi-independence by paying tribute to Turkey. But this did not 
suit Algeria, the strongest and most warlike of them; and in 17 10 the natives 
overthrew the rule of the Turkish pasha and added his authority to that of 
the dey (dahi), the native ruler. Subsequently he governed the country by 
means of a divan or council of State. The Algerians, with the other Barbary 
(Berber) States, defied the European powers. Their armed vessels swept 
the Mediterranean, constantly committing ravages on the merchant marine 
of other nations and almost driving commerce from that sea. France alone 
resisted these depredations, and this only partially, for, after she had repeat- 
edly chastised the Algerines and had induced the dey to sign a treaty of 
peace, the corsairs would await their opportunity and after a time resume 
their raids. In the end Algiers forced the United States to resort to arms in 
defencie of its commerce, and the long immunity of the pirates did not cease 
until the American republic undertook to check it. Before our Constitution 
had been adopted, two American vessels in the Mediterranean had fallen a 
prey to the swift, heavily armed Algerian cruisers. An enormous sum was 
demanded as the ransom of the crews. Our government had no navy, and 
could not help complying. But, before making the necessary appropriation 
for purchasing peace. Congress authorized the building of six frigates, and 
thus our navy was begun under the direction of Commodore Barry, of 
revolutionary fame (1794). Then, as a necessary provision for the future, 
the work of constructing the new warships was pushed with expedition, 
which proved to be a wise and timely precaution. In 1800 Tripoli, angry 
at not receiving as much money as Algiers, declared war against the United 
States. In the Mediterranean there was an American squadron of three 
frigates and a schooner. One of the former, the Philadelphia, blockaded 
two Tripolitan cruisers at Gibraltar, and off Tripoli the schooner defeated 
and captured another cruiser. This brilliant result had a marked effect in 
quieting the pirates, who for the first time began to respect the United States, 
and in 1805 Tripoli signed a treaty in which it agreed not to molest again 
American ships and sailors. But peace was not yet assured. In 18 15 the 
dey of Algiers declared war on the ground that he had not received certain 
tributes. In answer, on May 15 Commodore Decatur sailed from New 
York to the Mediterranean with three frigates, a sloop of war, four brigs 



The United States before the Civil War 657 

and two schooners, and in less than two weeks after entering the Mediter- 
ranean and making several captures he appeared off Algiers. The terrified 
dey sued for. peace, which he was compelled to sign on the quarter-deck of 
Decatur's flagship. He had to surrender all prisoners, pay a heavy indem- 
nity, and renounce all future tribute from America. Decatur also secured 
indemnity from Tunis and Tripoli for American vessels captured under the 
guns of their forts by British cruisers during the late war. This ended at 
once and forever the payment of tribute to the piratical States of North 
Africa. 

Vindicating Honor in European Waters. — A further example of the 
readiness of this country to defend itself upon the seas in its weak, early 
period was the result of American indignation at the ravages upon its com- 
merce by the warring nations of Europe. About 1798 the depredations of 
France on our merchantmen became so irritating that, without the formality 
of a declaration, a naval war broke out. The vessels of our new navy 
were put into service, "letters of marque and reprisal" were granted to 
privateers, and their work soon began to tell. The Constitution captured 
the Insurgente, the privateers brought more than fifty armed vessels of 
the French into port, and France speedily decided that she wanted peace. 
In 1832 one of the most interesting cases of difficulty with a foreign power 
arose. As with Algeria, Tripoli and France, so now our navy was resorted 
to for the purpose of exacting reparation. This trouble was with Naples, 
and its cause originated during the reign of Murat, Napoleon's brother-in- 
law. During the years 1809-12 the Neapolitan government had confiscated 
numerous American ships with their cargoes. The total amount of the 
American claims against Naples filed when President Jackson assumed 
office was ;^i, 734,994. Demands for payment had been repeatedly made, 
but refused. Jackson's administration was bent on due reparation, and a 
naval force was sent under Commodore Patterson to demand it. Extreme 
measures had to be threatened before payment of the principal in instalments 
with interest was guaranteed. Another such demonstration occurred at 
Smyrna in 1853. A Hungarian patriot of the war of 1849, named Koszta, 
had made his way to this country and taken out his preliminary naturaliza- 
tion papers. A year later he went to Smyrna on business and was there 
betrayed to the Austrian consul by a band of Greek mercenaries. An 
Austrian warship to which he had been taken was about to carry him off^ 
when Captain Ingraham, of the St. Louis, interposed and, after great 
difficulty, obtained his release. Scarcely had the plaudits over this victory 
died away when, next year, the republic of Nicaragua was compelled to 
make reparation for various outrages on the person and property of Ameri- 

42 



658 The United States before the Civil War 

can citizens dwelling in that country, which was brought to terms only by 
the bombardment of San Juan or Greytown, and in spite of the violent 
protest of England, which claimed a protectorate over the country. This 
was a period of international conflict for the United States, for in 1859 
Paraguay had to be chastised for a grave offence to an American exploring 
party four years earlier. It required a powerful fleet sent up the La Plata 
to bring President or rather Dictator Lopez to terms. 

Slavery in the United States. — This incident occurred on the eve of 
the gravest crisis through which our country has passed since the adoption 
of the Constitution. That instrument tolerated rather than sanctioned the 
existence of slavery in the States, every one of which had it at the time of 
the Revolution; but as the years passed on circumstances made it a political 
and a sectional issue that had more than once, and now more than ever, 
threatened the disruption of the Union. It is a curious fact that slavery 
and representative government were introduced into Virginia about the 
same time (1619). None of the other colonies had yet been founded, but as 
each, even Quaker Pennsylvania, came into existence, it followed the bad 
example. For a long time the institution grew very slowly; but such were 
the conditions of agriculture and climate that, once it obtained a fair start in 
the southern colonies, it spread with continually increasing rapidity. Even 
in some of the northern colonies slavery seemed to take root as readily 
and to flourish almost as rapidly as in the south; and it was only after a 
considerable time that social and commercial conditions arose which led 
to its being gradually abandoned. When the Revolution broke out there 
were not less than fifteen thousand slaves in New York, far more than in any 
other northern colony. Massachusetts, the home in later days of so many of 
the most eloquent abolition agitators, was a stronghold of slavery until 
the War of Independence was well under way (1780). In 1776 the slave 
population of the thirteen colonies numbered half a million, nii>e-tenths 
of it in the southern States. In the war then begun the question of arming 
the negroes raised bitter opposition, and comparatively few were enrolled; 
but it is admitted that these few served faithfully and with courage. Rhode 
Island even formed a regiment of blacks, who fought not only without 
reproach, but with positive heroism on at least two occasions. When the 
Declaration of Independence had asserted "that all men are created equal, 
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, 
that among these are life, Hberty and the pursuit of happiness," the peoples 
of the new, self-governing States could not but have seen that with them 
lay the responsibility. The fixing of the popular mind on liberty as an 
ideal, bore results immediately in arousing anti-slavery sentiment, and that 



The United States before the Civil War 659 

in the south as well as in the north. This feeling was strong in Virginia, 
where Jefferson and other leading men advocated the abolition of slavery, 
and even North Carolina declared (1786) the slave trade of "evil conse- 
quences and highly impolitic." But the freedom sentiment soon gained 
the upper hand everywhere in the north, where all the States abolished 
slavery, beginning with Vermont (not yet a full-fledged State) in 1777, and 
ending with New Jersey in 1804. It should be added, however, that many 
of the northern slaves were not freed, but sold to the south. The agricultural 
and commercial conditions in the north were such as to make slave labor 
less and less profitable, while in the south the social order of things, agri- 
cultural conditions and climate were gradually making it seemingly indis- 
pensable. 

Slavery and the Constitution. — When the debates of the Convention 
of 1787 began, the trend of opinion seemed strongly against slavery. Many 
delegates thought that the evil would die out of itself. Jefferson, on the 
other hand, roundly declared, in view of the retention of slavery, that he 
trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just; and John 
Adams urged again and again that "every measure of prudence ought to be 
assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States." 
The obstinate delegates in the Convention were those of South Carolina 
and Georgia, who declared that their States would absolutely refuse ratifi- 
cation to the Constitution unless slavery were recognized. The com- 
promise sections finally agreed upon, the result of a trade bargain between 
New England and the extreme South, avoided the use of the words slave and 
slavery, but clearly recognized the institution, and even gave the slave 
States the advantage of sending representatives to Congress on a basis 
of population determined by adding to the whole number of free persons 
"three-fifths of all other persons," meaning, it is needless to add, negro 
slaves. Another concession in this direction was the forbidding of Congress 
to make the importation of slaves unlawful before the year 1808. As that 
time approached, Jefferson urged Congress to withdraw the country from all 
"further participation in those violations of human rights which have so 
long been continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa." Such an 
act was at once adopted, and by it heavy fines were imposed upon all 
persons fitting out vessels for the slave trade and also upon all actually 
engaged in it, while vessels so employed became absolutely forfeited. 
Twelve years later another act was passed declaring the importation of slaves 
to be actual piracy, but it remained a dead letter until 1861. In spite of all 
laws, indeed, the trade in slaves was continued secretly, and the profits 
were so enormous that the risks did not prevent continual attempts to 
smuggle slaves into the territory of the United States. 



66o The United States before the Civil War 

Slavery Compromise and Popular Agitation.— For fully thirty 
years after the adoption of the Constitution there was comparative quietude 
in regard to the future of slavery. The first great political struggle due to 
it took place in 1820, over the admission of new^ States. Of the twenty-two 
States in the Union at the opening of that year, eleven were slave and 
eleven free, and this balance had hitherto been observed. Immediately after 
the admission of Alabama, of course as a slave-holder, Maine and Missouri 
applied for statehood. The granting of the privilege to Maine alone would 
have given a preponderance to the free States, and for this reason it was 
earnestly urged by southern members that Missouri should be admitted as a 
slave state. But the feeling of opposition to the extension of slavery was 
growing rapidly in the north, and many members from that section opposed 
this proposition. They had believed that the Northwest Territory Ordin- 
ance, adopted by the Confederation Congress simultaneously with the 
Constitution by the Convention of 1787, had settled this question definitely; 
but this ordinance did not apply to territory west of the Mississippi, so that 
the question really remained open. A fierce debate was carried on through 
two sessions of Congress, and in the end it was agreed to permit the intro- 
duction of slavery into Missouri, but to prohibit it forever in all future 
States lying north of the parallel of 36^30', the southern boundary of 
Missouri. This compromise was satisfactory only because it seemed to 
dispose of the question of slavery in the Territories once and for ever. 
It did, indeed, dispose of slavery as a matter of national legislative discussion 
for thirty years. But this period was distinctly one of popular agitation. 
Antislavery sentiment had long existed, especially among the Quakers 
since revolutionary times. Franklin's last public act was the framing of a 
memorial to Congress deprecating the existence of slavery in a free country, 
and a Manumission Society had been founded in New York in 1785. But 
gradual emancipation and colonization were the only remedies then sug- 
gested. It was with the founding of the "Liberator" newspaper and the 
Abolitionist party (1831) that the era of aggressive opposition to slavery 
began. Garrison's paper bore conspicuously the motto: "No union with 
slaveholders." But the Abolitionists never acquired great strength as a 
party; yet they served the purpose of arousing the conscience of the nation, 
though their orators and writers were abused, vilified, mobbed, all but killed, 
even in Boston. In the south, meanwhile, the institution was intrenching 
itself ever more firmly. The invention of the cotton gin and the beginning 
of the reign of cotton as king made the great plantation system a seeming 
necessity. That section's greatest orator and statesman so declared, and 
accordingly the Abolitionists were regarded there with intense hatred. 
Attempts were even made to compel the northern States to silence them. 



The United States before the Civil War 66i 

In the north, though the feehng against slavery was spreading, there coex- 
isted with it the behef that an open quarrel with the south meant commercial 
ruin; and the anti-slavery sentiment was also neutralized by the nobler 
feeling that the Union must be preserved at all hazards. The annexation of 
Texas was a distinct gain to the slave power, and the Mexican war, it was 
very plausibly charged, was undertaken in order that the slaveholding power 
in the governm.ent might be secured and riveted. It was, then, with 
increased bitterness and developed sectionalism that the subject of slavery 
in new States was again debated in Congress (1850), when the question of 
admitting California to statehood came up. Another compromise was 
reached which left that commonwealth to settle for itself the question of 
slavery, forbade the slave trade in the District of Columbia, but enacted 
a strict fugitive slave law which, especially after the Supreme Court's 
decision in the Dred Scott case, was as fuel to the Abolitionists' fire. They 
defied the law and the decision in every possible way, and organized the 
"Underground Railway" to help slaves to escape to Canada. It has been 
estimated that not fewer than thirty thousand of them were thus assisted to 
freedom. 



CHAPTER XL 



The American Civil War and After 



The Kansas-Nebraska Act and John Brown. — Slavery was primarily 
a matter for State legislation, but Congress had power to make all laws for 
the District of Columbia, in regard to foreign and inter-State commerce 
(including the slave trade), for the recovery of fugitive slaves (acts of 1793 
and 1850), and to regulate the Territories; but by the compromise of 1850 
it evaded its responsibility and thus emboldened the advocates of the exten- 
sion of slavery into new States. They soon embraced their opportunity. 
On January 4, 1854, Senator Douglas, of Illinois, introduced a bill for the 
organization of Nebraska Territory (originally including Kansas) that 
asserted the repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. He held that by 
virtue of the act of 1850 the people of a Territory enjoyed popular sover- 
eignty like those of a State, and therefore could legislate on slavery. The 
new Territory, then, was to be left to decide for itself as to whether it wanted 
slavery or not. During the discussion the bill was amended so as to divide 
the region into two Territories, Kansas and Nebraska, with the expectation 
that the former, lying immediately west of Missouri, would adopt slavery, 
and thus balance California. The bill became a law on May 30, and its 
purpose was soon revealed when hundreds of Missourians entered Kansas 
and took up land which only a minority of them intended to occupy as farms. 
On the other hand, a free soil movement in New England within three years 
sent out six thousand permanent settlers for a free State. The Missourians 
showed their purpose at an election held in March, 1855, for members of the 
first Territorial legislature. Most glaring frauds were perpetrated, and 
other hundreds from across the slave-State border came to support the fraud 
with arms and set up a legislature with a large pro-slavery majority. It 
met in July, passed a code of laws establishing slavery, and made it a crime 
even to assert that persons had not the right to hold slaves in the Territory. 
In November of the same year the free-soilers drew up a constitution at 
Topeka and attempted to establish a government. The two factions 
came to a civil war in the spring of 1856. About two hundred lives were 
lost, and Lawrence, a free-soil town, was sacked. "Bleeding Kansas" 
662 



The American Civil War and After 663 

became a phrase in almost everyone's mouth. Prominent among the armed 
supporters of free-soil ideas in Kansas was Captain John Brown, a man 
who was at all times ready for action. He believed that slavery could be 
coped with only by armed force. The way to make free men of slaves, he 
held, was for the slaves themselves to resist coercion by their masters. He 
was undoubtedly a fanatic in that he did not stop to measure probabilities 
or to take account of the written law. Having become inured to violence in 
Kansas, without reasonable hope he conspired to seize the United States 
arsenal at Harper's Ferry in Virginia. As the intended beginning of a great 
military movement his raid was a ridiculous fiasco. To attempt to make 
war upon the United States with twenty men was utter madness, and if the 
expected rising of the slaves had taken place, it might have yielded horrible 
results. The execution of John Brown was the logical consequence of his 
desperate act. Meanwhile the Federal Government had favored the pro- 
slavery party in Kansas; yet the Territory became a free State in 1861. 

Realignment of Political Parties.— There came a great political 
upheaval in 1854, for the Kansas-Nebraska bill had disorganized both of the 
old political parties, the declining Whig and the triumphant Democratic. 
In 1853 a secret political society, the Supreme order of the Star-Spangled 
Banner, was formed, and under its auspices the American party, on the 
platform of opposition to foreigners, and especially Catholics, swept the 
country in 1854. But the Know-nothings, as this party soon came to be 
called, ere long broke into factions over the slavery question, were defeated 
in Virginia in 1855 on the direct issue of their own principles, and disap- 
peared in the elections of 1856. But the nucleus of a stronger political 
combination had already been formed. It is said to have received the 
name Republican for the first time at Jackson, Michigan, in July, 1854. 
It was really but the development of the Free Soil section of the Democrats, 
with whom there now coalesced the anti-slavery elements of the other 
parties. In 1854 these new RepubHcans carried fifteen of the thirty-one 
States, and elected eleven Senators and a small majority of the House of 
Representatives; but, two years later, they lost both the House and the 
Presidency, for which they had a weak candidate. Then Abraham Lincoln, 
a frontier lawyer of humble birth and defective education, who had risen 
steadily as an advocate and an orator, appeared in the national political 
arena. Designated in 1858 by the Illinois Republican convention as the 
party's candidate against Douglas for United States Senator, he accepted in 
a splendid speech on the text: "A house divided against itself can not 
stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave 
and half free," though the issue was not yet the total abolition of slavery, 



664 The American Civil War and After 

but the preventing of its extension to Kansas and other new States. Then 
he boldly challenged his competitor to a series of joint debates, in which he 
showed wonderful acumen. The climax was reached at Freeport when 
Lincoln put the question whether the people of a Territory could lawfully 
prohibit slavery. Douglas admitted that they could, and thus alienated the 
men of the south who were bent on forcing slavery on a prospective state. 
Lincoln lost the senatorship from Illinois by a small majority, but he had 
rent the Democratic party in twain. When Douglas went back to Washing- 
ton, he found his party colleagues against him, and, to be consistent, he had 
to break with the southern Democrats. This year the Republicans again 
obtained a small majority in the House, but the Senate still remained strongly 
pro-slavery. The national conventions of i860 were followed with the 
keenest interest. That of the Republicans at Chicago nominated Lincoln 
for the Presidency. At Charleston the Democrats were hopelessly divided. 
The convention adjourned without nominating, on account of southern 
opposition to Douglas's Freeport doctrine. The majority met afterwards 
at Baltimore and nominated Douglas, while the southern bolters chose the 
then Vice-President, John C. Brecken ridge. Many of the old Whigs 
united in what they called the Constitutional Union party and nominated 
John Bell of Tennessee. Owing to these divisions Lincoln was elected. 

Secession and Civil War. — Though Congress would be Democratic 
in both branches during the first half of the next Presidential term, yet so 
bitter was the disappointment in the south at Lincoln's election that the 
South Carolina legislature immediately took steps towards secession. In a 
few days its chief Federal officers, including both its United States senators, 
resigned; and not a single Union man was elected to the convention that 
unanimously voted the State out of the Union on December 20. The 
President was weak, and had kept in his cabinet men v^^ho favored this action, 
while others resigned on account of it. Immediately after seceding the 
same State demanded that the forts within its borders be surrendered to 
it. While this question was pending, the officers in charge of the small 
United States force in Charleston harbor moved it from Fort Moultrie to 
the stronger and more isolated Fort Sumter. The Secretary of War, a 
southerner and a secessionist, insisted that Major Anderson, the officer in 
question, should comply with the State's demand, whereupon the head of the 
cabinet and another of his colleagues declared that if such a course were 
insisted upon they would resign. The President at last yielded to the latter, 
and Anderson was left at his post. Then, between January 9 rnd February 
I, six states, namely, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and 
Texas (in spite of Governor Sam Houston's strenuous opposition) followed 






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The American Civil War and After 66$ 

the example of South CaroHna. Before seceding they had seized all 
Federal property within their borders except Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens, 
Key West and Dry Tortugas in Florida. So as to form a combination of the 
seceded states, a convention of delegates from six of them was held in 
February at Montgomery in Alabama. That assembly drew up a pro- 
visional constitution for The Confederate States of America, and elected as 
President and Vice-President Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and Alexander 
H. Stephens of Georgia. The President duly appointed a cabinet, and a 
Congress was soon elected and sat for a year. Southern conventions and 
public men formulated and published long lists of grievances against the 
North, the chief and deciding one being that section's dislike of slavery, 
desire to check it, and permitting people to discuss it; while the North 
in its turn accused the South of arrogance and of scheming to extend slavery 
into new territory. Though the southern theory of secession was that it 
was not war, but a constitutional, expedient and practical method of 
settling the controversy between the sections, and plans of compromise 
were discussed during the winter of 1861, yet it was clear to most thoughtful 
men that the North would have to coerce the South back into the Union or 
permit it to form a separate nation. This the South knew, and therefore it 
was that the possession of the forts guarding the harbors of Charleston and 
Pensacola became vital to it. From the beginning South Carolina was 
bent on having Fort Sumter, over which was fired, on January 9, 1861, the 
first shot of the greatest of civil wars, when a South Carolina battery attacked 
a merchant ship sailing under the stars and stripes that was carrying men 
and ammunition to the stronghold in Charleston channel. 

Fall of Fort Sumter — Secession Completed. — This was actual war; 
but there was a lull until five weeks after the inauguration of President 
Lincoln just a month later than the formation of the Confederacy. In his 
inaugural address he thus sounded the keynote of his administration: "I 
hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the 
Union of these States is perpetual — ^To the extent of my ability I shall take 
care — that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States — 
Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respec- 
tive sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them." 
In selecting his cabinet he chose about equally from former Whigs and former 
Democrats. Then, having organized his administration, and still convinced 
that the surrender of the forts could only postpone war, on April 8 he gave 
notice of his purpose to send provisions to Sumter, thus throwing on the 
Confederacy government the responsibility for aggression. By this time the 
fort was at the mercy of batteries constructed around Charleston Harbor, 



666 The American Civil War and After 

whose forts were manned by seven thousand men under General Beauregard. 
Early on the morning of April 12 a shell from Fort Johnson burst almost 
directly over Sumter, w^hich, after having been bombarded for thirty hours 
while a relief expedition lay powerless outside the bar, was surrendered 
by Anderson on the 14th. Next day President Lincoln issued a proclama- 
tion asking the State governors to send seventy-five thousand militia. The 
slave states that had not yet seceded were thus compelled to take sides. 
Virginia, Arkansas and Missouri had refused to secede, and no conventions 
had been called in North Carolina and Tennessee, while Kentucky had 
voted to remain neutral. Missouri now challenged the legality of the 
President's call, Virginia seceded at once, and Arkansas, Tennessee and 
North Carolina soon followed its example, thus making the eleven States of 
the Confederacy. For a time Maryland also threatened to secede, and in 
Baltimore Union soldiers on their way to Washington were attacked by a 
mob that killed several of them (April 19). In Kentucky the regular 
state government remained loyal, while that of Missouri was deposed and, 
after a sharp struggle, the state was held for the Union. As the bombard- 
ment and fall of Fort Sumter had produced intense excitement and wrath 
as well as grief, in the north, there was an enthusiastic response to the call 
for soldiers, and money to meet the expenses of war was given with unheard 
of liberality. Even Lincoln's old opponent, Douglas, impetuously offered 
to him any service within his power for the preservation of the Union. He 
died that same year. 

Opening Campaign of the Civil War. — The North had numbers on 
its side, and thought the war would be a short one. Its population was 
twenty-three millions, as against nine millions in the South. To the nine- 
teen free states were added four of those holding slaves, namely, Delaware, 
Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri; and later in the war West Virginia 
seceded from the parent commonwealth. In these border states, with a 
total population of over three million, probably half a million adhered to the 
south, where, it must also be remembered, over a third of the inhabitants 
were slaves. But the Confederate whites were extremely patriotic from 
their own point of view, ready to sacrifice everything, and had exceptionally 
capable officers. It should also be noted that this war of rebellion was begun 
and continued in the most humane manner possible. By a proclamation 
issued on April 19, 1861, ordering the blockade of the southern ports, 
President Lincoln virtually admitted that the south had a government, 
carrying on civilized warfare. Flags of truce were recognized, and ex- 
change of prisoners began in about a year. On July 22, 1861, the Federal 
House of Representatives voted, with only two negative votes: "That 



The American Civil War and After 667 

this war is not waged upon our part in any spirit of oppression, or for any 
purpose of conquest or subjection, or purpose of overthrowing or inter- 
fering with the rights or estabHshed institutions of those states, but to defend 
and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union 
with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several states unimpaired." 
To do this it was necessary to invade the south, whose government moved 
from Montgomery to Richmond after Virginia had seceded. Washington 
was in danger for a few weeks after the fall of Fort Sumter, but the constantly 
arriving militia and volunteers saved it, and it was then strongly fortified. 
Thirty miles south of it, at Manassas Junction, there was a Confederate 
force of about twenty-three thousand men under Beauregard, and there was 
a loud call for somebody to break it up. Accordingly General McDowell 
was sent at the head of thirty thousand troops, who attacked at Bull Run 
(July 21), unaware that General Joseph E, Johnston had brought six 
thousand additional men from the Shenandoah Valley to Beauregard's aid. 
Nevertheless, in spite of the firmness of General Thomas J. Jackson (who 
received the nickname "Stonewall" on that occasion), the Confederate 
army was weakening when three thousand fresh troops came to its aid, and 
the Union forces were routed. Then the North realized the difficulty of the 
task before it. General George B. McClellan, who had shown superior 
military ability in West Virginia, was put in command of the army before 
Washington, and in November of all the armies of the United States. In 
the west armies had been quickly formed that kept Kentucky from seceding 
and held a part of Missouri. Brilliant services were rendered on the sea. 
Cape Hatteras was captured in August, and Hilton Head (South Carolina) 
in November. There, only sixty miles from Charleston, a permanent post 
was established. 

The Western Campaign of 1862. — ^While McClellan was organizing 
the Army of the Potomac, there was much hard fighting in the west. In 
January General George H. Thomas (a Virginian) defeated the Confederate 
Zollicoffer at Mill Springs on the Cumberland. With steam gunboats 
Flag-Officer Foote took Fort Henry on February 6. Then General Ulysses 
S. Grant, on the i6th, besieged and captured Fort Donelson and its garrison, 
compelling the Confederates to abandon Kentucky. General Don Carlos 
Buell occupied Nashville without having to fight, and Tennessee received 
a provisional state government with Andrew Johnson as governor. In 
April Generals Pope and Foote captured Island No. lo in the Mississippi, 
to which the Confederates had retreated, while in March a Confederate 
army had been scattered at Pea Ridge, west of the Mississippi. Grant's 
army had been sent to Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee, where Buell 



668 The American Civil War and After 

was ordered to join him; but before the latter could arrive, the former was 
attacked (April 6) at Shiloh by General Albert Sidney Johnston and driven 
back almost to the Tennessee. The Confederate general was killed and 
Beauregard, who succeeded him, was driven from the field next day with 
the aid of Buell's army, which had arrived in the early morning. General 
Halleck then took immediate command and on May 30 captured Corinth in 
Mississippi. The fleet immediately went down the river and took Memphis, 
thus controlling the Mississippi to Vicksburg. But now the Confederates, 
under General Bragg, who had succeeded Beauregard, on July 31 set out 
from Chattanooga, invaded Kentucky, and had almost reached Louisville 
when intercepted by Buell, who defeated them at Perry ville (October 8). 
General Rosecrans, succeeding Buell two weeks later, inflicted a second 
defeat on Bragg at Stone River or Murfreesboro (December 31-January 2). 
During November and December Grant and General William T. Sherman 
had pushed down along the Mississippi parallel with a fleet of gunboats 
under Porter, but failed to capture Vicksburg. In the spring Flag-Oflicer 
David G. Farragut, a native of Tennessee and a resident of Virginia, had 
been sent out with a fleet to force entrance to the Mississippi from the Gulf. 
On April 24 he boldly proceeded up the river, broke a boom at Forts 
Jackson and St. Philip, beat off" some Confederate vessels, and soon an- 
chored in front of New Orleans. The forts speedily surrendered. Soon 
afterwards a large Union force took possession of the city, which General 
B. F. Butler for a year ruled like a conquered province. 

The Fighting in the East in 1862. — By March the army of the 
Potomac around Washington had svv^ollen to 185,000 men, and, after much 
discussion, McClellan decided to march up the peninsula between the York 
and the James rivers, protected by the fleet at Hampton Roads. At 
Norfolk the Confederates had transformed the United States frigate Mer- 
rimac into a powerful ironclad that would have been a serious danger had 
not a naturalized Swede, John Ericsson, invented an armored craft to meet 
it, the famous Monitor, which the Confederates derisively designated "a 
cheese box on a raft. " The former Merrimac, now renamed the Virginia, 
was playing havoc with the Union vessels when, on March 9, it was con- 
fronted by the Monitor and, after five hours' fighting with it, was compelled 
to withdraw. In May, when Norfolk was captured, she was destroyed 
by her own crew. In April McClellan was ready to attack but was disap- 
pointed at the President's keeping from him, to protect Washington, forty 
thousand troops under McDowell. His army wasted a month besieging 
Yorktown, fought a battle at Williamsburg, and then advanced to the 
neighborhood of Richmond until May 31, when he was checked by Johnston 



The American Civil War and After 669 

in the battles of Seven Pines and Fair Oaks, only seven miles from the city. 
Johnston having been wounded, General Robert E. Lee took command of 
the Confederates next day. Meanwhile McDowell had been ordered to 
join McClellan on the north, but was withheld a second time because 
Jackson was threatening Washington from the Shenandoah Valley. There- 
upon Jackson suddenly joined Lee, and their united forces attacked McClel- 
lan, who, after the Seven Days' Fighting, was compelled to retreat to the 
James, though at Malvern Hill he had stopped the enemy's pursuit of him 
(June 26 to July i). Then in July the President called for three hundred 
thousand more men, and four hundred and twenty thousand almost immedi- 
ately responded. On the nth Halleck was summoned to Washington to 
become confidential military adviser to the President. A new army of 
Virginia was formed, with General Pope in command, and to it most of the 
old Army of the Potomac was gradually added. Taking the field in northern 
Virginia, after some skirmishing with Jackson's force, he was utterly 
defeated in the three days' second battle of Bull Run (August 28-30), and 
his army was withdrawn to the neighborhood of Washington. Lee then 
thought of invading the North, captured Harper's Ferry with a garrison of 
over twelve thousand (September 15), and crossed the Potomac, but was 
attacked by McClellan on the Antietam near Sharpsburg (September 17), 
and compelled to withdraw to Virginia. McClellan was removed from 
command on November 5, and succeeded by General Burnside, who 
marched to the Rappahannock, beyond which Lee had intrenched himself. 
Near Fredericksburg, on December 13, he attacked the Confederates, but 
was defeated with very heavy loss. At sea, however, the blockade had 
grown more and more effective, and several points on the Atlantic coast had 
been taken. 

Emancipation of the Slaves. — ^The impression now prevailed that 
the war would have to be carried beyond its original purpose and bring 
about freedom for the negroes. This work, indeed, had already been begun. 
In August, 1861, Congress had passed a confiscation act providing that when 
slaves were used in promoting insurrection the owners should forfeit claim to 
their labor. Many negroes had fled into the Federal camps, and at Fort 
Monroe General Butler had detained such refugees as "contraband of war," 
a phrase which soon became popular. Generals Fremont (August, 1861) 
and Hunter (May, 1862) had even gone farther and freed by proclamation 
the slaves in their military districts; but the President disavowed the action 
of both. Congress freed and gave compensation for the slaves in the 
District of Columbia (April 16, 1862), abolished slavery in every Territory 
without compensation (June 19), and provided (July 17) for the seizure 



670 The American Civil War and After 

of all the property of those convicted of treason. This course of making 
war in behalf of freedom, and not merely to rule the south, seemed necessary 
at a time when there was danger of foreign intervention on behalf of thous- 
ands of men in Europe, chiefly in England and France, made idle because 
the blockade had cut off the supply of raw material for the cotton manu- 
factures. Napoleon III, then trying to make Archduke Maximilian of 
Austria emperor of Mexico, and the English aristocracy openly wished to see 
the South succeed, and southern agents were hard at work to bring about 
recognition of the Confederacy. Lincoln had long thought over the ques- 
tion of freedom, but was afraid lest he might alienate Kentucky and Mis- 
souri. Therefore it was that in March, 1862, he sent a message to Congress 
urging the Federal government to cooperate with the States in freeing the 
slaves for compensation. Having been criticized for this action, in August 
following he wrote that his paramount object was to save the Union, and 
not either to save or to destroy slavery. At last he made up his mind that 
the best way to save the Union was to free the slaves. On September 22 
he read to his assembled cabinet the draft of a preliminary Emancipation 
proclamation, declaring free on January i, 1863, "all persons held as 
slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof 
shall then be in rebellion against the United States. " And on New Year's 
Day, 1863, he issued his second and final proclamation, applying to all the 
seceded states except Tennessee and those parts of Louisiana and Virginia 
occupied by Federal troops. In 1864 Congress repealed the Fugitive 
Slave Act. In 1862 the new State of West Virginia had adopted an anti- 
slavery constitution and Missouri had provided for gradual emancipation, 
and on October 13, 1864, Maryland abolished slavery outright. By state 
provision it also disappeared from Delaware and Kentucky. In 1863 
there were already several negro regiments in the Union armies, and by 
the close of the war 179,000 negro troops had received the pay and treatment 
of the white soldiers. 

The Critical Year of the War. — ^At the opening of 1863 the Union had 
918,000 men under arms, and the Confederacy 466,000. Grant was trying 
to pass Vicksburg by digging a canal behind it. This scheme failing, he had 
recourse to others, the last being a plan to strike the fortress from the 
east. On May i Fort Gibson was captured by McClernan, and this 
brought on the fall of Grand Gulf, south of Vicksburg, into which he drove 
Pemberton after defeating him at Champion Hill. With Sherman's aid 
Vicksburg was soon hemmed in completely, assaulted twice, and then 
regularly invested and bombarded. On July 4, 1863, it surrendered 
unconditionally with 29,000 men. Five days later General Banks, coming 



The American Civil War and After 671 

from New Orleans, captured Port Hudson and six thousand men, and 
Lincoln was able to say: "The Father of Waters again goes un vexed 
to the sea." During the early part of these months all the Army of the 
Potomac was able to do was to hold its own; but under General Hooker, 
at Chancellorsville (May 2), it was routed with great loss by Lee's army, 
chiefly through a sudden attack made by Jackson, who was killed there 
accidentally by his own men, an irreparable loss to the Confederacy. 
Then Lee again resolved to invade the north by way of the Shenandoah 
Valley, crossed the Potomac, and entered Pennsylvania in the neighborhood 
of Chambersburg. On account of friction with Halleck Hooker resigned, 
and General George G. Meade, a Pennsylvanian, succeeded him. On 
July I the two armies came in contact at Gettysburg. There was heavy 
fighting on that day and the next, but on the 3d the most important battle 
of the war was fought. Confederate victory there meant the possible 
capture of Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, and the recognition 
of the south by European powers, while Confederate defeat, which came 
to pass, meant the rewelding of the Union at no distant day. Lee, van- 
quished, began a slow retreat the following night, and was permitted to 
recross the Potomac. Later in the year this turning point of the war was 
emphasized by two more great battles in the west. Bragg was forced 
back to Chattanooga by Rosecrans, who captured that city and moved out 
to Chickamauga Creek, a little south of it. There (September 19) he was 
attacked by Bragg reinforced by Longstreet, and next day defeated — 
routed he might have been but for General Thomas, who bravely held his 
ground. The whole army returned to Chattanooga on the 22d. Mean- 
while Burnside, moving from Kentucky, had taken possession of eastern 
Tennessee. Rosecrans had to stay powerless in Chattanooga, as Bragg 
occupied the neighboring heights of Missionary Ridge and Lookout Moun- 
tain, and commanded communication by the Tennessee. He was super- 
seded by Thomas, whose forces and those of Sherman were united under 
Grant, who regained control of the river (October 27) and prepared to 
attack the enemy. Then on three successive days (November 23-25) the 
combined Union forces drove the Confederates from their strongholds. 
Burnside, besieged in Knoxville, was immediately relieved. Elsewhere, 
a Union army occupied central Arkansas, and a fleet of monitors and other 
ships destroyed Fort Sumter, but failed to take Charleston. 

Closing Period of the War of Secession.— Grant was, in March, 
1864, appointed acting commander-in-chief, that is, lieutenant-general with 
the authority of general over all the armies in the country. For himself he 
selected the Army of the Potomac, with which he took the field on May 4. 



672 The American Civil War and After 

Next day he was attacked by Lee in the Wilderness, from whose woods he 
extricated himself only after three days' confused fighting. He suffered a 
whole series of assaults (May 10-21), but kept on moving southward parallel 
with Lee's army, which it was his purpose to weaken at all hazards, irrespec- 
tive of his own losses. On June 3 he attacked the enemy at Cold Harbor, 
again edged southwards, on the 15th crossed the James, and attempted 
several times to take by assault, Petersburg, a railroad centre. From that 
place Lee tried in vain to draw him away, by sending General Early north- 
ward with a strong force that burned Chambersburg in Pennsylvania and 
reached the outskirts of Washington. Another attempt to take Petersburg 
(July 30) also failed, and he fell back on a regular siege that lasted many 
months. On the day that Grant began to move south, Sherman started on 
his advance from Chattanooga to Altanta. Against him was General 
Joseph E. Johnston, Bragg's successor. For four months Sherman worked 
his way along the railroad, flanking the weaker enemy at every point but one, 
the battle of Kenesaw Mountain, which was a front attack that brought 
little or no advantage. In July Hood had superseded Johnston, but to no 
avail, and Atlanta fell on September 3. The navy had also been active. 
In August Farragut attacked and captured the defences of Mobile. On 
the North Carolina coast the navy and army in cooperation took Fort 
Fisher in January, 1865, and closed Wilmington port. Charleston was 
now the only large port open to blockade runners. Early in 1864 General 
Philip H. Sheridan had been assigned to command the cavalry corps of the 
Army of the Potomac. After sharing in the march to Petersburg he was sent 
to the Shenandoah Valley to devastate it and keep Early in check. Beaten 
at Opequan Creek and Fisher's Hill, the enemy rallied and drove the 
Federals from their camp at Cedar Creek (October 19). Sheridan, hearing 
the guns at a distance of twenty miles northward, hurried to the scene, 
rallied his demoralized men and won a brilliant victory. After destroying 
the workshops and defences of Atlanta, Sherman started eastward (Novem- 
ber 15) for Savannah, devastating the country as he went. On December 
10 he reached the latter city, which surrendered eleven days later. In the 
west the Confederates under Hood tried to capture Schofield's force at 
Franklin (November 30), and they intrenched themselves south of Nashville. 
On December 15 Thomas drove them out of this position, and next day 
routed and dispersed them, thus practically ending the war in the west. 
From Savannah Sherman marched to Columbia which was burned (Febru- 
ary 17, 1865), and next diy Charleston was occupied. On March 19 he 
defeated Johnston at Bentonville in North Carolina, and a month later 
occupied Raleigh. Grant was still before Petersburg keeping Lee in the 
trenches, while Sheridan was raiding the country north and west of Rich- 



The American Civil War and After 673 

mond. To cover his intended retreat Lee forced a series of fights from 
March 25 on, then abandoned Richmond and Petersburg (April 3), and 
started westward along the Appomattox river, followed closely by Grant 
and intercepted by Sheridan. On April 9 he surrendered at Appomattox 
Courthouse. At Raleigh on the 26th Johnston did likewise to Sherman, 
and the war was practically at an end. Two weeks later Jefferson Davis 
was captured. 

Peace and Reconstruction. — In November, 1864, Lincoln had been 
reelected President, with Andrew Johnson, the war governor of Tennessee, 
as Vice-President. Shortly before the collapse of the Confederacy he and 
his Secretary of State, William H. Seward, had a conference at Hampton 
Roads with the South's Vice-President, A. H. Stephens, but nothing came 
of it. On learning of the fall of Richmond, Lincoln instructed Grant that 
the surrender of Lee's troops must be unconditional. It was so, but they 
were released on parole as long as they observed the laws in force where 
they resided. There was promise of an early satisfactory settlement of 
conditions in the commonwealths that had been in rebellion when Lincoln, 
at the height of his popularity for having brought the war to a successful 
close, was assassinated by a fanatic (April 14) and the weak Johnson became 
President. Then political and sectional bickerings prolonged for twelve 
years the restoration of normal conditions in some of the states that had 
been in rebellion against the Union. Union garrisons were soon distributed 
over the entire south, not to be withdrawn from certain sections until 1877, 
and provisional governments were naturally set up on the plausible grounds 
that the former states could not safely be reconstructed at once, and that 
the negroes might not receive their full rights unless protected by the 
Federal government. Governors were appointed as to Territories, and the 
incapacity and greed of some of them caused considerable trouble. Presi- 
dent Johnson's dealings with the South caused friction between him and 
Congress, which took reconstruction out of his hands altogether and en- 
deavored to enbody the results of the war in three amendments to the 
Constitution. The first of these (Thirteenth Amendment), which was 
generally accepted, simply prohibited the reenslaving of the negroes. By 
the second (Fourteenth) it was meant to give them protection in the per- 
sonal rights of property-holding, fair trial, travel in public conveyance, 
etc; but appeal was made to the Supreme Court, which left the states nearly 
free to deal as they pleased with these questions. This decision led to the 
third (Fifteenth) of these amendments, which was intended to assure the 
suffrage to the negroes, unwisely because too soon, is now the opinion of 
many of the most thoughtful of our public men, Men should be educated 

43 



674 The American Civil War and After 

to political duty before being intrusted with political privileges. These 
amendments were incorporated in the fundamental law respectively on 
December i8, 1865, July 28, 1868, and March 30, 1870. In the process of 
reconstruction the first State that had seceded (South Carolina) was the 
last to regain (1877) all the privileges of an equal member of the Union. 

The Money Cost of the War — Alabama Claims— Alaska. — In 

addition to the inevitable great loss of life and property which the war 
entailed, it increased enormously the public debt of the United States. 
This debt, only thirty-seven and a half million dollars in 1835, was less than 
sixty-five millions in i860, and about forty-five per-cent more the following 
year. But in 1866 it amounted to over ;^2, 773,000,000, its maximum. 
At once the government began to pay it off, and continued to do so until 
1894. During the war, gold had so appreciated that at one time it was 
worth much more than twice the face value of the temporarily irredeemable 
paper currency. This currency was made up of "greenbacks," national 
bank notes, and "shin-plasters" or paper small change of fractions of a 
dollar, for all of which the Federal government assumed responsibility. 
In 1865 greenbacks rose to about seventy per-cent of gold, and in 1871 to 
ninety. A few years later an act was passed that specie payments be 
resumed in 1879, and a year before that date arrived the premium on gold 
had vanished. Though our public debt is still considerably over two bil- 
lions, yet in proportion to the population and wealth of the country, it is the 
smallest of the debts of the great nations. During the war Union interests 
had suffered enormous losses on the high seas by the raids of marauding 
privateers fitted out for the most part in England. The most active and 
successful of these vessels was called the Alabama, and from it the claims 
for losses against Great Britain came to be known as the Alabama Claims. 
Other grievances against England were the recognition of the Confederacy 
as a belligerent, the hospitality of British ports to commerce destroyers, 
and the supposed prolonging of the war by British sympathy. For some 
years the British government refused to consider these claims, which some 
American public men made preposterously excessive; but in May, 1871, a 
Joint High Commission drew up a treaty at Washington that admitted 
Great Britain to have been at fault; its government formally apologized 
"for the escape, under whatever circumstancs, of the Alabama and other 
vessels from British ports." An arbitration commission was appointed, 
composed of one British, one American, and three foreign representatives. 
Next year the arbitrators met at Geneva and after long discussion agreed 
that England should pay to the United States an indemnity of 1^15,500,000. 
While official England had been hostile to us during the great crisis, Russia 



The American Civil War and After 675 

had shown marked friendship; and when it intimated a wiUingness to part 
with Alaska, Secretary Seward took the hint and arranged a treaty for the 
purchase of that region for ^7,200,000, a treaty which the Senate ratified 
on April 9, 1867. 

Mexico and Minor International Incidents. — During the Civil War 
Napoleon III had taken advantage of our embarrassment to interfere unduly 
in the affairs of Mexico. In 1861 he was joined by England and Spain in an 
effort to collect damages from our southwestern neighbor; but his allies 
withdrew when they saw that he wanted to turn that expedition into a war of 
conquest. A French army, at one timie numbering sixty thousand men, set up 
an empire having Archduke Maximilian of Austria at its head. Even 
while our Civil War was raging. Secretary Seward several times warned 
Napoleon not to force monarchical government on an American republic; 
and at the end of the war he sent a large force of Union troops to Texas as a 
hint to the French to desist, and at last his firmness compelled them to 
withdraw (1867). Soon afterwards Maximilian was captured by the Mexican 
Republican army and shot. The Civil War also gave rise to questions 
relating to the Isthmus route to California and to a naval station in the 
West Indies. With Honduras and Nicaragua, Seward made treaties 
looking to a canal, similar to one with Colombia that had been concluded 
in 1846. In 1867 he tried to purchase the West Indian islands of St. 
Thomas and St. John from Denmark, but the Senate would not ratify 
the treaty. Owing to immigration, treaties affecting naturalized citizens 
were (beginning in 1868) negotiated with the various German States, Austria 
Belgium, France and England. A native of those countries staying five 
years in the United States would lose his native citizenship; but if he 
returned and lived two years in his mother country, he might lose his 
American citizenship. In 1872 a dispute over the San Juan Islands in 
Puget Sound was settled with England by arbitration, and another on the 
Canadian fisheries in 1877, purchasing for five and a half million dollars 
privileges to extend over a period of ten years. In 1869 President Grant 
tried to have the Senate ratify a treaty for the purchase of the negro republic 
of San Domingo, but did not succeed. The Cubans had in 1868 risen in 
rebellion against Spanish rule. Our government observed neutrality as 
far as it could; but in 1873 the Virginius, carrying a filibustering expedi- 
tion, was captured by a Spanish cruiser, and fifty-three of the prisoners 
were shot, among them eight Americans. War was evaded by the 
Spanish government granting an indemnity to the families of the latter, 
though it proved that the steamer in question was not an American vessel. 
Two years later Grant threatened to ask for the cooperation of the European 



676 The American Civil War and After 

powers in intervention in Cuba, with which Spain made peace in 1878. 
Negro slavery soon died out there, and the island's trade increased rapidly; 
but its people "went to work to save money for another revolution," as a 
participant in the rebellion afterwards said. It was not so very long in 
coming. 

Cuban Insurrection and the Spanish War. — In spite of the island*s 
great and ever increasing prosperity, among the natives there was great 
discontent with Spanish rule, for in government and society they were looked 
down upon by the Spaniards, were heavily taxed, and were kept as much 
as possible out of the trade of the island, which was almost monopolized 
by Spanish merchants. Accordingly, in 1895 another rebellion broke out, 
aided by a combination (Junta) of wealthy Cubans in the United States, 
who supplied most of the "sinews of war. " Savagery on both sides marked 
the struggle, and neither party seemed able to subdue the other. The 
western end of the island was held by the Spaniards, who collected the 
people outside the towns into camps, where many of them perished. It 
often occurred that the property destroyed belonged to American citizens; 
and American traders and newspaper correspondents were arrested and 
punished on the charge of helping the rebels. Besides the fact that the 
greater part of Cuban trade was with the United States and suffered great 
loss on account of the war, American sympathy went naturally to those 
struggling for independence, and the Senate (1896) appointed a committee 
to investigate Cuban conditions. There were loud demands that Spain 
either grant reforms or let Cuba go. Such was the state of feeling in this 
country when open hostility to the Americans in Havana led our government 
to send the battleship Maine to guard their interests. That vessel, lying in 
Havana harbor, was there blown up by a submarine mine (by whom placed 
has never been determined) on the evening of February 15, 1898, and two 
hundred and sixty of the men on board were killed. Congress at once 
(March 9) placed fifty million dollars at President McKinley's disposal, 
for war was likely as long as Spain could not protect American property 
or shipping in Cuban waters. After long negotiations with Spain, which 
would not give sufficient guarantees, the President told Congress (April 11) 
that the war in Cuba must stop, in the name of humanity and civilization, 
and in behalf of endangered American interests On the 20th Congress 
directed the President to use the military and naval forces of the United 
States to drive Spain out of Cuba. Havana and other Cuban ports were 
at once blockaded, and Commodore Dewey, in command of our Pacific 
squadron, was ordered to find and fight the Spanish fleet in the Philippines. 
Entering Manila Bay on May i, he found it there, and, after a four hours' 



The American Civil War and After 677 

fight, utterly demolished it with scarcely any loss to his own force. He 
had brought with him a former Philippine rebel leader, named Aguinaldo, 
who raised a native army to besiege Manila by land, and the combined army 
and fleet took the city on August 13. Meanwhile another fleet had left 
Spain for Cuba, but Admirals Schley and Sampson soon cooped it up in 
Santiago harbor. On June 22 an army under General Shafter was landed 
at Guantanamo, whence it proceeded towards Santiago, met with stubborn 
resistance on San Juan Hill (July i), and made further progress next day. 
With the city now at its mercy, the Spanish fleet dashed out for liberty 
(July 3), but was totally destroyed by the ships under Schley, which suff"ered 
very little damage. Sampson, who had prepared for such a movement, was 
accidentally absent. The American army now pushed closer to Santiago, 
which surrendered on the 17th. Another army under General Miles 
landed in Porto Rico on the 25th, and the people there welcomed the in- 
vaders. Though still having some fifty thousand men at Havana, Spain 
was unable to ofi^er further resistance, and negotiations for peace were 
opened at Washington. 

Results of the Spanish War. — A preliminary agreement (protocol) 
was signed on August 12. By its terms Spain had to evacuate Cuba and 
cede Porto Rico to the United States. The future of the Philippines was 
left to be disposed of by the regular treaty of peace. Next day Manila 
surrendered, news of this agreement not having yet reached there. The 
definitive treaty of peace was signed at Paris on December 10, and, in 
addition to the terms stated above, provided for the cession of the Philip- 
pines and Guam (in the Ladrones) to the United States for a payment to 
Spain of ^20,000,000. Our Senate ratified the treaty on February 6, 1899, 
Spain did so on March 19, and it was proclaimed by the President on 
April 14. Aguinaldo, hoping for the independence of the Philippines, had 
kept his forces together outside of Manila. On December 24, 1898, 
American troops were sent to Iloilo, on Panay island. The Philippine 
leaders became discontented at this show of intention to hold the islands 
permanently, and their soldiers started fighting on February 4, 1899. 
Thus began a war against the United States that was kept up in various 
parts of the islands until 1902, more than a year after Aguinaldo was 
captured. Then civil was substituted for military rule and still continues; 
but a hope of receiving self-government at an early date is held out to the 
Filipinos. At first Porto Rico also was placed under military rule, but in 
April, 1900, it received a modified form of Territorial government, the upper 
house of its legislature being appointed by the President. In 190 1 the 
Supreme Court decided that Porto Rico and the Philippines are neither 



678 The American Civil War and After 

foreign countries nor complete parts of the United States until Congress 
chooses to incorporate them, and that Congress can make a separate 
tariff for these dependencies. It had done this for Porto Rico on April 12, 
1900, and it similarly favored the Philippines on March 8, 1902. In 
1898, after a revolution, the Hawaiian Islands gave themselves to the 
United States, and Congress accepted the gift. They were organized as a 
Territory in 1900. Since 1889 the Samoan Islands had been administered 
jointly by England, Germany and the United States; but, owing to native 
turmoil, ten years later the three powers divided them between them, 
our government taking Tutuila, which has the best harbor in the group. 
Wake and various other small islands lying in the mid-Pacific, never claimed 
by any other power, were annexed by the United States as telegraph or 
landing stations. After the evacuation of Cuba by the Spaniards, United 
States troops remained to establish order, as the war had produced complete 
disorganization. In a few months of military guardianship, under General 
Leonard Wood a temporary civil government was given to the island, and 
in July, 1901, a convention adopted a constitution admitting suzerainty 
from the United States, and establishing a republic, of which General 
Palma was elected as the first president. The new government was installed 
on May 20, 1902, when the United States gave up all control except that 
provided for in the Constitution, and withdrew its troops. Palma was 
reelected in 1906. 

The Panama Canal and Republic. — Five years after the liberation of 
Cuba the United States was instrumental in bringing another sovereign 
State into existence. Though an old treaty with Colombia (then New 
Granada, 1846) gave us the privilege of constructing a canal across the 
Isthmus of Panama, yet in 1878 the Colombian governm.ent granted a 
"concession" to a French company for the same purpose. The prime mover 
of the project was Ferdinand de Lesseps, the engineer of the Suez canal, and 
therefore a man in whom French investors might well have confidence. 
It was a tide-level channel through a divide about three hundred feet high 
that he planned. As the company showed earnestness by beginning to 
raise money at once. President Hayes thought it his duty to arouse interest 
in the people of the United States against the idea of the canal being controlled 
by Europeans, but he spoke in vain. In a message to Congress (1880) he 
referred more mildly to the project, saying that the De Lesseps canal 
would be a great ocean thoroughfare between our Atlantic and Pacific 
shores, and "virtually a part of the coast line of the United States." In 
the few months he was Secretary of State in 1881 (March-December), 
James G. Blaine showed anxiety to make it clear that the United States 



The American Civil War and After 679 

was specially concerned in the Panama canal; accordingly he strove to get 
rid of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty (1850), by which the United States was 
not to acquire any Central American territory and neither it nor England 
could erect fortifications there; but England stood by that treaty. Then 
a private company was formed in New York (1884) for a rival canal through 
southern Nicaragua, but little came of it. Work was carried on by the 
French company from 1881 to 1889, when it ceased, owing to gigantic frauds, 
after ^260,000,000, including salaries, etc., had been spent on it. An 
incident of the Spanish war, the Oregon's being compelled to steam around 
Cape Horn in order to join Sampson's fleet in the West Indies, showed the 
need of an isthmian canal. Accordingly in 1899 Congress provided for a 
special commission of experts, which next year reported in favor of the 
Nicaragua route because the French company wanted too much money for 
that of Panama. Then fortuately Great Britain, by the Hay-Pauncefote 
treaty (November 18, 1901), abandoned all claims to any share in a Central 
American interoceanic canal. The French company offered to sell for 
^40,000,000, and Congress authorized the President (June 28, 1902) to 
accept the offer and complete the Panama canal or that through Nicaragua, 
if Colombia would not make favorable terms. A suitable treaty was 
drafted and signed by that country's representative in Washington, but his 
government refused to ratify it (September 14, 1903). A few weeks later 
(November 3) the State of Panama seceded and formed a new republic 
that was at once recognized and protected by the United States; and on 
February 23, 1904, a treaty with it for the construction of the canal was 
ratified. Soon after convening in December, 1905, Congress made an 
appropriation for beginning the work, and before adjourning in June, 1906, 
passed a law decreeing the construction of a lock canal. 

Venezuela and the Monroe Doctrine. — ^An old principle of United 
States policy was unexpectedly made prominent towards the close of 1905, 
when appeal was made to it against the government that first suggested it. 
The Monroe Doctrine dates from the period when Spain's American colonies 
were seeking freedom from Madrid tyranny. England was leaving no 
stone unturned to prevent the Continental powers from helping Spain to 
bring America back to obedience, and her foreign minister, George Canning, 
suggested to John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State to President Monroe, 
to assert a protectorate over the new American republics. It was formulated 
in the President's message to Congress of December 2, 1823, and is to the 
effect that the United States would consider any attempt to extend the 
European political system to any portion of America as dangerous to its 
peace and safety. At the same time the American continents were declared 



68o The American Civil War and After 

to be no longer subjects for colonization by any European power. This 
doctrine it was that was asserted against Napoleon on behalf of Mexico. 
Now it was to be used against England. British Guiana borders Venezuela 
on the east, but the exact boundary line had been in dispute for some years, 
England claiming an extensive territory which Venezuela said was hers. 
The former became so insistent that the latter broke off diplomatic relations 
and appealed to the United States. Our government quietly tried to have 
the matter submitted to arbitration, but England declined. Then, sud- 
denly, in December, 1895, President Cleveland startled the world with a 
special message to Congress describing the long-standing controversy, and 
stating that Great Britain had declined the proffered mediation and refused 
to arbitrate. The President and his Secretary of State, Richard Olney, 
interpreted England's action as an attempt to control part of an American 
State, and therefore contrary to the Monroe Doctrine. The British 
premier, the Marquis of Salisbury, became highly indignant, and for a 
little while war seemed imminent. But he cooled down after the President 
had shown he was in dead earnest by appointing a commission to find out 
the real Venezuelan boundary, yielded, and accepted arbitration. In 
1899 the arbitrators divided the region in dispute and gave the more valu- 
able section to British Guiana. But that country of volcanic politics and 
chaotic finances soon again subjected the Doctrine to a severe strain. 
Revolution in 1899 was followed by civil wars, during which very much 
property of Europeans was destroyed. England and Germany demanded 
reparation in vain, and then (December, 1902), joined by Italy, they 
blockaded the Venezuelan ports and sank several of the Republic's vessels. 
Appeal was made to President Roosevelt to arbitrate the claims; but he 
declined and recommended that the matter be referred to the international 
Hague Tribunal. This was done and the blockade raised (February, 
1903). The incident induced our President afterwards to make an addition 
to the Monroe Doctrine, since known as the Roosevelt Corollary, to the 
effect that, in order to preserve their independence, our government compels 
the Latin-American republics to pay their just debts. In 1904-6 we 
ourselves have had unpleasant relations with the Caracas government 
that are not yet at an end. 

Progress of Our Country. — From an almost perishing Union in the 
early "sixties" of the last century our country has within the past few years 
become a great world power. Its population has increased from thirty-one 
and a half millions in i860 to over eighty-five millions in 1906, exclusive 
of the insular possessions acquired in and after 1898. Before secession 
began there were thirty-three States in the Union, five having been added 
since the admission of Texas, namely, Iowa in 1846, Wisconsin in 1848, 




GENE-RAL LEE'S INVASION OF THE NORTH. 
The Confederate army, under General Lee, twice invaded the Northern 
States. The first invasion was brought to a disastrous end in the battle of 
Antietam, September 10, 1862 ; the second invasion ended with greater disaster 
July 1 to 3, 1863, at Gettysburg. Gettysburg was the greatest, and Antietam 
the bloodiest, battles of the war. 




THE BOMBARDMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 

«f tiI'^®v,o®/P*4^?^,P^*'"i^*^' ^^^^^^ °° ?* *^® <^^" <^^ ^""abl Pasha, for expulsion 
of t^e hated British from their country, made a vigorous stand behind the 
fortifications of Alexandria. The British fleet, however, poured a heavv 
cannonade into the city and captured it after it had been plundered and Dartiv 
burned by the retreating Egyptians. partly 



The American Civil War and After 68i 

California in 1850, Minnesota in 1858, and Oregon in 1859. During the 
war there were three admissions — Kansas in i86i, West Virginia in 1863, 
and Nevada in 1864, The additions since then have been: Nebraska in 
1867, Colorado in 1876, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and 
Washington in 1889, Idaho and Wyoming in 1890, Utah in 1896 and 
Oklahoma (embracing Indian Territory) in 1906, with the unprecedented 
start, since the adoption of the Constitution by the original States, of a 
population entitling it to five members in the national House of Representa- 
tives; while New Mexico and Arizona have been offered the privilege of 
voting on joint or separate statehood. A remarkable development has 
been the rapidity with which the population of the middle west and far west 
has increased; but even more remarkable has been the growth of our 
cities, the greater New York, with a population of over four millions accord- 
ing to the State census of 1905, being a close second to London; while two 
others have each over a million and a half, three more over half a million, 
thirteen between that and two hundred thousand, and a score more over 
a hundred thousand. This growth has been an indirect result of the war. 
The high tariff needed to raise money to pay its cost served to protect and 
foster American industries until the United States has become the greatest 
manufacturing country in the world, and American genius has made our 
products equal in almost every respect, and superior in many, to those of 
other nations. Our natural resources have, of course, had much to do with 
this, but they would not avail without enterprise and intelligence. Parallel 
and in pace with these growths has been that of our transportation systems, 
especially since the railroad first spanned the continent (1869). We have 
had many joint exhibits of our progress, the most notable of which have 
been those held at Philadelphia to commemorate Independence (1876), 
at Chicago for the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America 
(1893), at St. Louis (1904) for the centenary of the Louisiana Purchase, 
and at Portland (1905) in honor of the Oregon exploration by Lewis and 
Clark. The greatest stain upon our reputation was long the practice of 
corruption in politics. A small beginning of remedying this evil was 
made by the Federal Civil Service Act of 1883, whose working has been 
greatly extended, especially under the administration of President Roose- 
velt, and which has been imitated, and often improved upon, in many of the 
States. But in 1905-6 worse than political corruption was revealed in 
financial, commercial and transportation operations, and have been to a 
great extent remedied by legislation. State and Federal, and internal "house- 
cleaning. " To the new drastic insurance laws of New York have succeeded 
such reform laws (June, 1906) on corporations and inter-State commerce 
as Congress had never before thought of. 



CHAPTER XLI 



The Latin American States 



Spain's American Possessions. — Less than a century ago Spain 
owned nearly half of the American continent, all of it, in fact, from Oregon, 
the Louisiana Purchase and the northern boundary of Florida to Cape Horn 
except Brazil and the Guianas; and in the West Indies it still held Cuba and 
Porto Rico, the only possessions on this side of the Atlantic left to it when 
the first quarter of the nineteenth century was spent. Its continental 
domains were divided into four viceroyalties, namely, Mexico, New Gran- 
ada, Peru and Buenos Ayres, with which Upper Peru (now Bolivia) was 
connected. The loss of this vast colonial empire was due, as usually 
happens, to the old errors of the Spanish government, errors which it never 
wholly corrected, and besides to certain praiseworthy efforts made by it in 
the eighteenth century. Once rebellion had begun in consequence of the 
disorganization caused in Spain by the Napoleonic invasion, England's 
intrigues lent it powerful support. Already in the eighteenth century the 
English had contemplated either conquering the Spanish colonies, or at 
least, in the interest of their commerce, winning freedom for them. This 
outcome was spoken of as inevitable in the near future. The Spanish 
revolution of 1820 and the events following it made it impossible for the 
mother country to recover her rebellious provinces. The essential cause 
of these insurrections must none the less be sought in the manner in which 
Spain governed its possessions. The commercial monopoly which it 
imposed on them has often been spoken of; but in the eighteenth century 
that system, which, moreover, Spain had not been alone in inventing or 
practising, had almost disappeared under Charles III. The galleons had 
been done away with, and most of the Spanish ports had been authorized 
to trade directly with America. Accordingly the relations between the two 
countries had become tenfold more important and the active contraband 
trade previously carried on by the English had been ruined. But general 
policy and administration had ever remained the same, in spite of the efforts 
made by the Bourbon kings and the changes they had introduced rather in 
the titles than in the real duties of the administrators. Their dominant prin- 
682 



The Latin American States 683 

ciple still was that the natives, no matter what their origin might be, should 
have no share in the government. A Creole (native American of Spanish ori- 
gin) could in Spain itself reach the highest offices, but never was it possible 
for him to be appointed viceroy of Mexico or Peru. This precaution, of very 
old date, had been taken to prevent attempts at separation. There was a 
time when, instead of stopping, it stimulated them. It was when the Creole 
element had become numerous, rich and influential, and, as happened 
towards the end of the eighteenth century, had been made acquainted with 
the new ideas either by journeyings abroad or merely by being educated 
in the colleges which the Bourbons themselves had founded in various 
places. From that time the Creoles were less and less tolerant of the ex- 
clusiveness practised against them in their own country, and so much the 
more as the Spanish administrators had the same faults beyond the Atlantic 
as at home. Even the judiciary was venal. Men crossed the sea only 
to become rapidly rich almost irrespective of means to that end. If the 
Spaniards had incurred the hostility of the Americans of their own race 
(the Creoles), they had generally succeeded in living on good terms with the 
Indians, whom they treated much more humanely than did the other 
colonizing races except the French. They had converted them, had 
declared them subjects of the crown, and asked of them only rather moderate 
taxes and tasks. Regarding them as an inferior race, they had never 
subjected them to the supervision of the Inquisition. Accordingly, in the 
wars of independence, the Spanish generals occasionally succeeded in getting 
supports from them. 

How Mexico Won Its Independence. — In Mexico, as in all the other 
colonies, the Bayonne events and their consequences, by disorganizing 
Spanish administration, facilitated revolt. Viceroy Iturrigaray having been 
deposed by the Spaniards, the natives began to take up arms on their own 
behalf in 1809. It must not be forgotten that those of Mexico had more 
energy and less of the spirit of submissiveness than those of Peru. In 18 10 a 
half-breed parish priest named Hidalgo raised an army made up mostly of 
pillagers, with which he captured Guanajuato. There his bands com- 
mitted atrocities which completely ruined his cause. The terrible General 
Calleja beat him at Atalco and Guadalajara. Hidalgo was captured in 
flight and shot (July 27, 181 1). But his failure did not discourage Morelos, 
also a native priest (only a Spaniard could become a bishop). At Chil- 
panzingo he convened a congress which proclaimed the independence of 
Mexico (September 13, 1813). But, beaten by Iturbide, he met his prede- 
cessor's fate (December 22, 18 15). Mina, coming from Europe to satisfy 
as an insurgent leader his hatred of Ferdinand Vll, in his turn succumbed 



684 The Latin American States 

in the same way (1817). The new viceroy, Apodaca, by substituting a 
policy of indulgence for his predecessor Calleja's violent oppression, seemed 
to have restored Spanish authority when the revolution of 1820 broke out in 
Spain. The Cortes proved as inflexible as Ferdinand VII, granting only 
twenty-six deputies to America and refusing to consider a plan which the 
colonists presented to obtain autonomy merely (June, 1821). But Mexico 
was already escaping from them. Iturbide, a general in whom Apodaca 
had placed full confidence, came to an understanding with the advocates of 
independence, got his troops, largely natives, to rebel, and published the 
Iguala manifesto, which proclaimed the equality of the races, and the future 
constitution of Mexico in a new Bourbon monarchy (February 24, 1821). 
But the Cortes rejected this arrangement, which the new viceroy, O'Donoju, 
had ratified. Iturbide had himself proclaimed emperor (1822), was 
deposed the following year, and shot in 1824 for having tried to regain 
power. The capture of San Juan de Ulloa took from the Spaniards their 
last possession in Mexico (1825). In 1824 that country had adopted the 
form, which it has retained, of a federal republic. But it was a long time 
to be distracted by civil wars, the result of antagonism between the Creole 
aristocracy and the Indian democracy. Guatemala, which had followed 
Mexico's example (1821) and even annexed itself to it for a little while, 
also became (September 7, 1824) a federal republic of five States which soon 
quarreled among themselves and then separated (1839) to form the five 
Central American republics of to-day. 

The Colombian and Argentine Republics. — ^The so called Terra 
Firma provinces (New Granada and Venezuela), long since in more fre- 
quent relations with Europe than the others, were much more accessible to 
the independence ideas. In 1806 General Miranda, a former lieutenant 
under Dumouriez, made a fruitless venture on Venezuela. His successor 
was he whom his fellow-countrymen have surnamed El Libertador (the 
Liberator), Simon Bolivar, born at Caracas in 1783. Though much over- 
praised by those whom he served, yet he deserved a large part of the repu- 
tation he enjoyed, for, along with remarkable military talents, he had 
elevated political ideas, which, however, the shortcomings of his fellow- 
citizens made impracticable. Moreover, he had a cruel experience with 
them. Acknowledged by Venezuela as dictator in 1814, he had to fight the 
able general Morillo, was defeated, and obliged to flee to Jamaica (1815). 
The English furnished him with the means of undertaking a fresh expedi- 
tion (May, 1816). He made Angostura his headquarters, soon reduced 
Morillo, who got no reinforcements, to holding only the fortresses, took 
Colombia from him by the battle of Boyaca (1819), forced him to sign an 



The Latin American States 685 

armistice, and, lastly made himself master of Caracas in consequence of the 
victory of Cara bob o (June 24, 1821). In 1819 the Angostura congress had 
proclaimed the independence of Venezuela, and then its union with Colom- 
bia, In 1822 Ecuador, conquered by one of Bolivar's lieutenants, Sucre, 
joined the federation. 

The Portenos (inhabitants of the port), as the people of Buenos Ayres 
were called, had feelings analogous to those of the Venezuela Creoles. The 
inhabitants of the interior, on the contrary, were half barbarous. They 
united to drive out the Spaniards, and then quarreled on the question of 
centralism or federalism, that is, as to whether the capital should master 
the province or not. In 1806-7 Popham's and Beresford's Englishmen, by 
two successive expeditions, had tried to seize Buenos Ayres and Montevideo, 
but had been beaten by the Frenchman Jacques de Liniers. When Napo- 
leon had installed Joseph at Madrid, Buenos Ayres refused to recognize 
the new king, and, unable to obtain a sufficient representation from the 
Cadiz Cortes, rose in rebellion against the mother country. After some 
rather uninteresting doings, the Tucuman congress (July 9, 18 16) pro- 
claimed the independence of the Argentine Republic. Its head, Puy- 
erredon, was inclined to give a Portuguese prince to it as king, but nothing 
came of this project. Brazil entered into a contest with the new State 
about Banda Oriental (Uruguay) and occupied it in 18 16. After a long 
war England intervened and had it erected into a separate repubHc (1828). 
Later on the Argentine President Rosas tried in vain to reconquer it (1835- 
51). 

Paraguay Becomes a Despotism. — Paraguay followed destinies far 
different from those of the other Spanish colonies. This was because 
its situation was quite peculiar. Isolated in the heart of the continent, it 
had only a purely Indian population, disciplined by nature and by tradition, 
as the Jesuits, who had long controlled it, had discovered as it were by 
instinct the methods that had been used successfully by the Cuzco Incas. 
In the last place, the Spanish language was almost unknown in Paraguay, 
where scarcely any tongue was spoken but the Guarani. Dr. Francia, a 
man of French origin, as his name indicates, a disciple of Voltaire on his 
own account and of the Jesuits from the political point of view, took advan- 
tage of the docility of the Paraguayans to become their soveriegn ("su- 
premo"). Spanish authority had ceased in 181 1. In 1813 Francia had 
himself made consul, temporary dictator the following year, and in 181 7 
dictator for life. By an uncommon chance the event justified the title, 
for Francia reigned until his death (1840). As the Jesuits had of old closed 
in Paraguay so as to protect their catechumens from the violence of the 



686 The Latin American States 

colonists, Francia also isolated it in the interest of his own power. Anyone 
who crossed the country's frontiers was held as a prisoner, as was the 
naturalist Bonpland, for example. Living like the ancient tyrants, con- 
stantly changing his sleeping room, having the streets entirely cleared when 
he wanted to go out, and making his barber his chief confidant, the Supremo 
ruled his subjects, who trembled in his presence, in accordance Vv^ith the 
authoritative methods to which they had been accustomed. The country 
prospered. When the dictator died, at the age of eighty-three, it was his 
nephew, Lopez, who succeeded him, and then the latter's son, who was quite 
naturally called Lopez IL Paraguay, in short, was a monarchy until 1870, 
and this form of rule succumbed only to the force of foreign arms. 

Chili, Peru, and Brazil. — As the region of the Andes had not fallen 
under the same European influence as Buenos Ayres or Caracas, probably 
it would not have revolted of its own accord for a long time had not Bolivar 
on the one hand, and on the other the Argentines, regarded as necessary 
the taking from Spain of the region in which it could prepare offensive oper- 
ations. Chili had risen for the first time in 18 10, but the Spaniards had 
gained the upper hand of the movement. In 18 17 the Argentine general 
San Martin, having with him the former leader of the insurgents O'Hig- 
gins, crossed the Andes and conquered Chili by the victories of Chacabuco 
(February, 1817) and Maypu (April 5, 1818). The new State had a navy, 
commanded by an Englishman, Lord Cochrane. In the Chiloe Islands the 
Spaniards held out until 1826. 

In Peru the bulk of the Indian population had no inclination to change 
government, and for a long time furnished recruits to the Spanish generals. 
Until 1820 there were only fruitless movements that were easily suppressed. 
But that year Lord Cochrane carried San Martin to Peru with forty-five 
hundred men. The Spaniards lost Lima, but held out in the Andes region, 
and when San Martin, who was dreaming of empire, had, on the contrary, 
been obliged to leave. General Canterac regained possession of the capital. 
Bolivar, who had taken good care not to aid San Martin, then came hur- 
riedly, had himself proclaimed dictator, and triumphed over the Spaniards 
by the victories of Junin and Ayacucho (June 6 and December 9, 1824). 
Upper Peru became a separate republic under the name of Bolivia. By the 
capture of Callao (1826) the Spaniards lost their last Peruvian possession. 

Portugal's weakness relatively to Spain and the special events of its 
history gave to the separation of Brazil far more pacific forms. In 1808 the 
regent (who became King John VI in 18 16), fleeing from Lisbon upon 
Junot's approach, had installed himself at Rio. The country had in that 
way been opened to foreign commerce and had derived much advantage. 



The Latin American States 687 

John VI, who had raised it to the rank of a kingdom, took very good care not 
to leave it lest there might be a separatist movement. The Portuguese 
events of 1820 were needed to make him return to Lisbon. The Portuguese 
Cortes then wanted to restore Brazil to its former condition of a dependent 
colony. But John VI's son, Dom Pedro, secretly authorized by his father 
and menaced, moreover, with a republican insurrection in the northern 
provinces, proclaimed the independence of Brazil and assumed the title of 
emperor (October, 1822). Portugal yielded by treaty on August 29, 1825. 

The Chief Later Events in the New States — Mexico. — The Spanish 
republics have not had exactly a placid history. They have been rent by 
civil wars for the possession of power. That condition has arisen from 
various causes, and especially from the Indian origin of the majority of their 
populations. In the beginning there was incongruity between the character 
of the people and the form of government. But this condition has been 
tending to vanish. Out of the Spanish republics Bolivar would have liked 
to form a vast federation, and with a view to this he convened (1826) a con- 
gress at Panama. The scheme, to which the United States and England 
were very hostile, came to naught. Bolivar at last succeeded in uniting 
the various States of Peru and Colombia and tried to assume dictatorship 
there. But the union did not last a year, and the Liberator died (December, 
1830) just as he had lost power and when the United States of Colombia had 
kept their neighbors in a divided condition, on the other hand, in agreement 
with England, it had kept Europe from interfering. Such was the object of 
the Monroe Doctrine (see preceding chapter). 

After acquiring independence, the Mexican republic was almost con- 
stantly disturbed by civil wars which, in the guise of political conflicts, really 
represented the struggle of the dominant classes, of Spanish origin, against 
the Indian masses, or rather their leaders. These divisions were to have 
very unfortunate consequences by paralyzing the development of the 
country and by bringing about foreign intervention. In the first place, 
almost simultaneously, there was a quarrel with France on account of acts 
of violence committed on Frenchmen, when the French fleet, under Admiral 
Baudin and the prince of Joinville, bombarded San Juan de Ulloa, and the 
secession of Texas, which brought on the Mexican war (see Chapter 
XXXVIII). In 1857, the Indian party having gained the upper hand, a 
congress convened at Mexico City, adopted a democratic and federal con- 
stitution, and at the same time various measures against the Church, whose 
property was confiscated. The conservatives had recourse to arms, and, 
under the command of General Miramon, seized the city of Mexico. But 
the opposite party, supported by the United States, won out in i860 with 



688 The Latin American States 

Juarez, a lawyer of pure Indian blood, whom the fall of Comonfort had raised 
to the presidency. The civil war had been attended by acts of violence on 
English and Spanish subjects. On the other hand, a naturalized French- 
man of Swiss origin, Jecker, protected by the duke of Moray, claimed, with 
the aid of the French government, the payment of a pretended debt of fifteen 
million dollars contracted by Miramon, who had received less than one- 
tenth of it. In case of success Moray was to have thirty per cent. By the 
treaty of London (October 31, 1861) the three powers united to enforce 
their respective claims. Spain and England, after Vera Cruz had been 
occupied, made terms with Juarez and withdrew. The result of Napoleon 
Ill's persistence is told in the preceding chapter. After the execution of 
Maximilian Juarez continued as president, and died in office in 1872. His 
successor, Lerdo de Tejada, a conservative, was overthrown in 1876 by 
Porfirio Diaz, a lawyer and soldier, who has been president ever since 
except for one term (1880-4), when the constitution was amended so as to 
have him reelected. Adopting a moderate policy, he restored order, and 
under him the country has had unprecedented prosperity. 

Central and South America since 1830. — The history of the small 
states of Central America since the collapse of their union (1839), ^^^^ 
their revolutions whose importance is in inverse ratio to their great frequency, 
their efforts at a union soon made impossible by their rivalries and wars 
with one another (the latest occurring in July, 1906, between Guatemala and 
San Salvador aided by Honduras), are of little interest except in reference 
to the interoceanic canal question. The idea of such a route dates back to 
the time of Charles I of Spain and V of Germany (1534). His son, Philip 
II, had the plan of a Panama canal studied, but it was declared to be 
impracticable. In 1745 the Spanish government rejected also the idea of a 
canal across the Tehuantepec isthmus. In the eighteenth century, under 
the ministry of the elder Pitt, with this object in view the English thought of 
conquering the isthmus of Panama. In the nineteenth century the question 
came to be seriously studied when the importance of California developed. 
No less than fourteen different plans have been evolved, most of them, 
however, only variations of four, namely, the Tehuantepec, the Nicaragua, 
the Darien and the Panama; and since the United States Congress (June, 
1906) has authorized the construction of the latter temporarily in the lock 
form (see preceding chapter), the importance of even the most feasible of 
the others, the Nicaragua, has diminished. There has been a railroad 
across the isthmus of Panama since 1855. The State of this name, seceding 
from Colombia in 1903, has since, been an independent republic, except a 
strip along the canal route ceded to the United States. 



The Latin American States 689 

Since obtaining their freedom, the South American repubHcs, with the 
exception of Chili, have, as has been said, had a turbulent career with their 
many and monotonous revolutions, of which the personal rivalry of party 
leaders has generally been the cause. In Colombia and Venezuela the 
question of centralism or federalism has also been grafted on that of persons 
and more or less closely mingled with it. Brazil, on the contrary, ruled by 
Dom Pedro II, the first emperor's son (1831-1889), during that period 
enjoyed a rather stable peace, owing to which its resources were considerably 
developed. The emperor was an intelligent, educated and well meaning 
prince. He attracted foreign colonists, especially Germans (in the southern 
provinces), and in 1871 had a law enacted emancipating all children of 
slaves thereafter born. In 1888 slavery was totally abolished. But though 
very much in sympathy with the Brazilians, he let himself be absorbed 
immoderately in his scientific concerns. His authority was weak, and 
everybody knew that at his death the empire would disappear. The repub- 
lican party at last grew tired of waiting, and in 1889 a military revolution 
deposed the aged sovereign, who died two years later. Scarcely was it 
installed when the new government had to face a revolt of the navy, which 
it took some time to put down, and several less formidable uprisings in the 
provinces. 

The Paraguay War. — Dom Pedro's reign was marked, externally, by 
two wars, the second of which was very long and bloody. He supported 
the Argentine general Urquiza against the dictator Rosas, who, from 1829 
to 1852, wielded absolute power at Buenos Ayres, upholding himself at one 
and the same time by trickery and improbable crudities, braving the block- 
ades organized against his capital by France and England, and trying, but 
in vain, to sieze Montevideo defended by Garibaldi. Rosas, defeated at 
Monte Caseros by his adversaries aided by a Brazilian army (1852), left 
his country and died in England. The Argentine Republic, moreover, for 
a long time continued to be disturbed by civil wars, but, becoming the seat 
of immigration from Europe, which in certain years rose to several hundred 
thousand persons (mostly Spaniards, Italians and French), it some time ago 
entered upon a period of calm and even agricultural prosperity, in spite of a 
very serious financial crisis in 1890. 

The Paraguay war (1864-70) was caused by the territorial ambitions 
of the Supremo (despot) of that strange State, Solana Lopez (Lopez II), 
who had succeeded his father in 1862. Lopez, disposing of absolute power, 
and of a considerable and devoted army, thought he could attack Brazil and 
Argentine simultaneously, having had a frontier dispute with them. He 
had as ally the president of Uruguay. Brazil and Argentine, united by the 

44 



690 The Latin American States 

common danger, began by stirring up a revolution in their favor at Monte- 
video, and then from the south attacked Paraguay, v^hose armies had taken 
Corrientes and occupied the province of Matto Grosso. From 1865 to 
1867 the alHes met w^ith Httle but reverses; but their adversary v^as becoming 
exhausted. The fall of the formidable fortress of Humaita was followed 
by the invasion of the enemy's territory. Lopez ordered the population to 
leave only a desert to the victor. His cavalry mercilessly sabred all laggards. 
By a defeat at Angostura he lost Assuncion. Yet he continued the struggle. 
The count of Eu, Dom Pedro's son-in-law, entrusted with the command of 
the army, defeated him once more at Caraguatry (August, 1869) and 
crushed him at Aquidaban (March, 1870). Lopez was slain in this last 
battle. Three-fourths of his people, almost the whole manhood population, 
had perished. Paraguay lost all the disputed territories. In 1879, however, 
it received as compensation the territory situated to the left of the Pilcomayo. 

Wars on the South Pacific Coast. — ^A war between Peru and Chili 
was scarcely less long or less bloody. Its cause was a dispute between 
Bolivia and Chili concerning nitrate beds in the Atacama desert. In con- 
tempt of treaties concluded in 1866, 1871 and 1874, Bolivia pretended it 
alone had the right to work the deposits comprised between Lat. 23° and 
25° S. Its resolute attitude came to it from a secret treaty concluded with 
Peru. Chili began hostilities (1879). Its fleet, at first held in check by 
the able and courageous Peruvian admiral Grau, at last gained the upper 
hand in the battle of Mejillones, where the Peruvian ironclad Hauscar was 
captured. Admiral Grau and all his officers sought death and found it. 
The Chilian general Baquedano first completely crushed the Bolivians by 
the victory of Tacna (1880). Both the presidents of Bolivia and Peru were 
overthrown, and the Limans acclaimed General Pierola. The Chilian 
army had landed near the capital, while Lynch, at the head of another 
expedition, ravaged northern Peru. Pierola could meet the enemy's strong 
discipline only with his soldiers' courage and the theatrical bravery that had 
made his popularity. He was defeated in the two battles of Miraflores and 
Chorillos (near Lima). Lima and Callao were taken (1881). The follow- 
ing year Bolivia ceded its coast province, and then (1883) Peru in its turn 
abandoned all the districts of Tarapaca and Tacna. General Caceres 
obtained the presidency of Peru by revolution in 1886, and in 1895 General 
Pierola in the same manner. The country has only recently begun to 
recover from the ravages of the Chilian and these civil wars. 

Except in the very early years of its existence as a nation. Chili had 
hitherto had a peaceful history. Before 1879 ^^ ^^^ waged but a single war, 
as an ally of Peru against Spain claiming from the latter the payment of 



The Latin American States 691 

an old debt (1866). The Spanish revolution of 1868 put an end to hostilities. 
Chili is not a democratic republic. It is governed by an aristocracy whose 
power is defended by a property qualification election law. President 
Balmaceda, entering upon a conflict with the congress on the question as to 
whether the rights of the head of the State extended to his being absolute 
master in the choice of his ministers, appealed to the people, won the army 
over to himself, and drove out the legislators. But the latter, in control of 
the fleet, established a foothold in the northern provinces, at Inquipue, 
formed an army there, and entrusted it to a veteran of the Peru-Bolivia war, 
Colonel Canto. Balmaceda had made the mistake of having his troops 
commanded by two generals. Those of the opposing party having landed 
near Valparaiso, the congress cause won in the two battles of Aconcagua 
and Placilla (August 23 and 28, 1891). These battles were extremely 
bloody, for the Chilians are very brave and their army is inferior only in 
numbers to the best armies in Europe. Balmaceda, unable to flee, hid for 
a time in the Argentine minister's house, and then, fearing he would be 
discovered, committed suicide. This war almost immediately led to friction 
with the United States. Our minister to ChiH had angered the people there 
by indiscreetly taking the part of Balmaceda. Consequently in October 
some men from the United States ship Baltimore were attacked in Valpa- 
raiso, and three of them were killed and several wounded. In the following 
January President Harrison had just recommended war when an apology 
came, and hostilities were averted. Since then Chili has been peaceful and 
prosperous. 

The Pan-American Movement. — After the failure of Bolivar's pro- 
ject for a Latin-American alliance (Panama Congress, 1826), several other 
efforts were made to bring about a union of some sort or other. During 
the few months that Blaine was Secretary of State in 1881, he strove to 
establish an American policy that w^ould bring about leadership among the 
various American States and trade reciprocity between the United States and 
the Latin-American commonwealths. While the South Pacific war was in 
progress, he saw what losses and confusion were caused by such strifes 
between those governments. The Peruvians and Bolivians being at the 
mercy of Chili, he instructed our ministers to Peru and Chili to do all in 
their power to mitigate the conquerors' demands. But our representatives 
exceeded their instructions, and threatened Chili. This action made the 
impression on the minds of Latin-Americans that we wanted to dictate to 
them. Blaine was convinced that it was to the interest both of this country 
and of the peoples south of us, to foster trade in both directions by reciproc- 
ity treaties, by "fair trade," as they say in England, or the reducing of 



692 The Latin American States 

certain tariff duties on both sides. Our Congress, however, would not 
accede to his wish. Returning to the premiership in President Harrison's 
cabinet (1889), next year he called a Pan-American congress to meet at 
Washington; and this gathering recommended a Pan American bank, a 
Pan-American railroad, and commerical treaties on the reciprocity plan. 
Negotiations brought about a few of such agreements, but the Senate 
never confirmed them, though it did make such a temporary arrangement 
with Canada, which, however, it has failed to renew. The difficulty has 
arisen from the unwillingness of Congress to make any break whatever in 
the solid wall of our protection system. The reciprocity asked for, how- 
ever, would affect only such articles as a country may need, but does not 
produce. The latest Pan-American congress met at Rio de Janeiro 
(Brazil) on July 23, 1906, and the United States was represented there by 
several delegates, among whom was Elihu Root, Secretary of State in Presi- 
dent Roosevelt's cabinet. 

Africa before the Berlin Congress of 1884-5. — ^While the Latin- 
American republics, shielded against the danger of conquering invaders from 
the Old World, were left "to fight it out among themselves," Africa was 
being greedily parceled out among the European powers, having no guardian 
with a Monroe Doctrine to protect it. Of course the cases were different, 
as the natives of Africa were almost wholly savages. It is only a generation, 
indeed, since Africa was still designated as the Dark Continent, as it was 
almost wholly unknown beyond the ocean fringe. Only a very few explor- 
ers had ventured into the interior until well on into the second half of the 
nineteenth century. It is especially since the journeyings of Barth, Speke 
and Livingstone, and above all Stanley's great expedition, that we have come 
to know that vast continent so much of which was left blank on the maps of 
the school days of some of us. The discovery of interior Africa is among the 
greatest achievements of the last century. Its partition and utilization 
must certainly have a decisive influence on the future of the European 
powers for ages to come. At first glance it is difficult to understand how, 
vast though it be, a region contiguous to Europe could have so long remained 
unknown. But the fact is easily explained to anyone who remembers that, 
in addition to the obstacles of climate, in the Dark Continent no one can 
depend on a natural path for entrance. All the rivers without a single 
exception are broken by many cataracts, the most elementary means of 
transportation are lacking there, and, in the last place, the inhabitants, 
except occasionally in the Mussulman regions, are grouped under the 
authority of petty local chiefs none of whom can guarantee the traveler's 
safety for any great distance, and who, moreover, in the past were not much 



The Latin American States 693 

inclined to do so. Therefore the colonization of Africa became possible 
only when, on the one hand, Europe had to seek new outlets for its economic 
activity, and when, on the other, it had in railroads the means of making 
good for what the nature of Africa absolutely could not furnish. Before the 
Congress of Berlin (1884-5), which ^^ ^ great extent regulated the partition 
of Africa and laid down the rules that were to govern the occupation of its 
territories, four European powers already owned domains on that continent. 
Since the epoch of the great discoveries Portugal has had settlements on the 
coasts, on the west the territory of Angola, south of the Congo, and on the 
east Mozambique, from Delagoa Bay north to the Rovuma River. The 
French colony of Senegambia dates from 1637. England took it in 1 756, 
the French recovered it in 1779, England seized it again during the Revo- 
lution wars, but restored it to France in 1814. From 1854 to 1857 French 
sway was extended somewhat towards the Niger, and wholly so from 1876 
to 1885. In 1843 it had begun its establishments on the Guinea coast, 
while the first foundations of the French Congo province were laid in 1839, 
but it was only between 1879 and 1882 that it was extended to its present 
dimensions. France's conquest of Algeria has already been recorded. 
By the conquest of the western Sahara and Soudan it has in recent years 
united that province with its Senegambian and Guinea possessions. Be- 
fore 1885 England had in western Africa Gambia, settlements on the Gold 
Coast enlarged in 1871 by purchase of neighboring territory from Holland, 
Lagos and a few other places near the mouth of the Niger. In 1873-4 
Ashantee was conquered by General Wolseley. On the lower Niger both 
England and France had settlements, but at the close of 1884 the latter sold 
to the former, who then turned over everything in that region from the 
river's mouth to Lokodja, to the Royal Niger Company. From 1883 dates 
the German province of Southwest Africa, from 1884 Germany's acqui- 
sition of Togo and Cameroon (Guinea region) and German East Africa. 
This action prevented the carrying out of England's intention to have con- 
tinuous territory over the whole length of Africa from the Cape to Cairo. 
How England came into possession of South Africa and control of Egypt has 
already been told. 

The Berlin Congress and the Congo State. — Germany's acquisi- 
tions and the efforts made by Leopold II, king of the Belgians, to obtain 
the Congo basin for Belgium, brought about the holding of an international 
congress at Berlin (1884-5), which laid down general rules, that have not 
always been fully respected, to be followed in regard to the acquiring of 
new territories. Leopold II had taken into his service the famous explorer, 
Henry M. Stanley, and founded the African International Association, 



694 The l^atin American States 

which took the place of a studies committee organized in 1879. Before 
putting himself at the king's disposal, the explorer had tried in vain to 
prevail upon England to take the native chiefs of the region under its pro- 
tection (1883). The Belgians, instructed by Stanley, signed with the 
various negro chiefs treaties that placed the latter under the authority of the 
International Association, whose domain thus extended from Leopoldville 
to Stanley Falls, at the Equator (1884). But in the same year Portugal had 
made with England (February 26) an agreement by which the latter, for 
great economical and other advantages, acknowledged the former's sov- 
ereignty over the whole coast from 5° 12' to 8° S. Lat. On the other side 
De Brazza, on behalf of France, setting out from Gaboon, had explored 
(1875-84) the country between the coast and the middle Congo and estab- 
lished many posts, among them Franceville and Brazzaville. The tribes 
of the regions on the right bank of the river had acknowledged the protec- 
torate of France. Thus was the new African State of the Congo cut off 
from the sea, which would have made life impossible to it. To settle this 
question and, in a more general manner, all questions raised by the occupa- 
tion of the African territories, an international congress assembled at Berlin 
in November, 1884, and closed its labors on February 26, 1885. It recog- 
nized the Congo State, whose sovereign the king of the Belgians was declared 
to be, and, in a general way, determined its boundaries to be those of the 
river's basin. To the north of the estuary Portugal kept, however, the 
isolated region of Cabinda, and France, as well by virtue of the Berlin act 
as of another agreement, obtained, with the exception of a strip of territory 
at the mouth, the whole right bank of the Congo as far as the Ubanghi, and 
thence the right bank of the latter, which was thought to come from the 
north. The Berlin treaty opened the Congo region to the trade of all 
nations (no differential duties could be imposed), proclaimed freedom of 
navigation on the Congo, the Niger and all their affluents, as well as on the 
canals that might be constructed in their basins. It provided also that 
thereafter occupations of territory must be effective in order to be valid. But 
this declaration was annulled in fact by the opposite theories of the Hinter- 
land (back country) and the Spheres of influence. France had acquired 
over the new Congo State the right of preemption, that is, in case its owners 
wanted to sell it, France would have preference over every bidder at the 
same price. It afterwards agreed to come second to Belgium in such a 
contingency. During the past two years English agents have been indus- 
triously circulating stories of outrageous Belgian cruelty in the Congo State, 
with what purpose may be surmised, and a heated controversy arose in 
consequence. 

Abyssinia and Italy. — Another European power covetous of African 



The Latin American States 695 

territory, Italy, has not been so fortunate as those so far mentioned. It 
undertook to seize a large slice of Abyssinia, and met with disaster. This 
country, a mountainous plateau intersected in all directions by ravines, has 
since the early Middle Ages maintained its nationality and its corrupted 
Christian faith against many assaults from the Mussulmans. Until the 
present day it has retained a feudal organization at the head of which is the 
emperor or Negust (king of kings, commonly called the Negus). In 1867 
Negus Theodoros, a fantastic and violent despot, imprisoned the British 
consul and several other English subjects. Great Britain sent against him 
an expedition led by Sir Robert Napier. Betrayed by his vassals, Theo- 
doros committed suicide just as the English were forcing their way into 
Magdala, his capital (1868). After a period of anarchy, he was succeeded by 
Johannes, king of Tigre (1872). When England took Egypt it ceded to 
Italy, already established at Assab (1882), the port of Massowab (1885) so 
as to obtain its cooperation against the Soudan dervishes. The Italians 
conceived the idea of conquering the neighboring plateaus, but one of 
Johannes's generals, Ras (prince) Alula, exterminated a column of them at 
Dogali (1887). Johannes having perished in a battle with the dervishes 
(1889), his successor, Menelik, king of Shoa, consented to sign a treaty at 
Utchali (1890) one clause of which the Italians interpreted as giving them a 
protectorate (which it was not meant to do). Menelik having rejected the 
Italian interpretation of the text of this act, Italy's prime minister, Fran- 
cesco Crispi, ordered General Baratieri to attack him. Baratieri seized a 
part of Tigre and made a prematurely triumphal entrance into Makalle. 
But a general rising of the Abyssinians compelled him to retreat to Adowa, 
where, on March i, 1896, his army was completely destroyed. Italy 
abandoned its claims and remained satisfied with El Mareb as boundary, 
v/hich Menelik conceded to it. Besides the Massowah lowland strip, 
Italy has also occupied part of the Somali coast; but these colonies have not 
been very prosperous. Menelik has recently (1906) been introducing some 
European interests into his realm. 

The French in Madagascar. — Over the great island lying off the 
southeastern coast of Africa France had claims dating back to the middle of 
the seventeenth century, claims which the treaties of 18 15 confirmed. The' 
English governor of the Isle of France, Sir Robert Farquhar, pretended that 
Madagascar was a dependency of his jurisdiction. He had to abandon his 
interpretation of the treaties, but from that time English diplomacy never 
ceased striving to banish French influence from the island. To this end it 
favored extending the power of the Hovas, a Malay tribe settled on the 
central plateau, in Imerina. The Hova conqueror, Radama I (1810-28), 
was recognized by the English as king of Madagascar, on condition that he 



696 The Latin American States 

would tolerate their missionaries, that is, their political agents. Radama 
drove the French from Tanatave and Fort Dauphin, and summoned them 
to evacuate Sainte Marie. His widow, Ranavalo, closed the country 
against foreigners. In 1840-1 the French admiral Hell seized Nossi Be 
and neighboring islands, Mayotte and the northwest coast. Under Napo- 
leon HI Ranavalo was succeeded by her nephew, Radama II, who had 
asked for the protectorate of France; but the English missionary agents 
prevented this until 1861, when Radama proclaimed religious liberty and 
permitted foreigners to settle in the country. Then a Frenchman obtained 
the concession of a large part of the island; but a rebellion put an end to 
Radama's reign and life (1863). English influence predominated. In 
1869 Ranavalo II and her prime minister received baptism and declared 
Protestantism the State religion. The Hovas having seized the French 
possessions in 1882, Admiral Pierre was sent (March, 1883) to defend 
French interests in Madagascar; but he was able only to bombard and 
occupy a few points on the coast. On December 17, 1885, a treaty was 
signed recognizing Ranavalo II as queen of the whole island, while she 
admitted the protectorate of France in foreign relations only, and ceded 
Diego Suarez to that country. But this treaty was never respected, and in 
1895 the French government resolved to send a new and decisive expedition. 
In May it landed at Majunga on the west coast, and on September 30 
reached Tananarivo, the Hova capital. After an insignificant fight the 
queen yielded, her prime minister, the real ruler, was banished to Algeria, 
but the Hovas kept up a series of petty insurrections fomented by the court. 
Two leaders of this movement, one of them the queen's uncle, were shot, 
and she was carried off to Algeria (1897). Since then peace has prevailed in 
the island, and colonial enterprises have developed rapidly there, for it had 
become a French colony after the queen's banishment, and, in return for the 
undisputed occupation of Zanzibar, England recognized France's claims. 

France, Tunis, and Morocco. — At the Berlin congress of 1878 the 
French negotiators had got England and Germany to acknowledge France's 
right to regulate as it saw fit the question of the Tunis regency. Italy, of 
whose people there was a numerous colony there, would have liked, alleging 
the exploits of the Scipios and other Roman warriors, to seize that country, 
but no power, beginning with England, cared to see Tunis and Sicily in the 
same hands. In 1881, so as to get possession of the regency, France seized 
the pretext furnished to it by some disturbances on the Algerian frontier 
between detachments of its troops and the restless tribe of the Khrumirs. 
The real reason was the increasingly aggressive attitude of the Italians, 
who had purchased the railroad from Tunis to Goulette, the outlet of the 
northern Tunisian lines. Twenty-three thousand French soldiers crossed 




AMERICANS STORMING SAN JUAN HILL. 

„,. ^"/'I\? }^2- Spanish- American War the Americans, under Theodore RnosA 

velt, at that time Colonel of the Rough Riders, charged up the Hill of Tan 

Juan, and dislodged the Spanish from the blockhouse at its top ° 



The Latin American States 697 

the frontier. There was no resistance. The Porte, under the pretext of its 
pretended suzerainty, hastily armed a squadron to intervene, but speedily 
recalled it when threatened by the French government. The bey of Tunis, 
Mohammed-es-Sadok, upon the arrival of General Breart's column, on 
May 13 signed the treaty of Bardo, by which he accepted the protectorate of 
France. The too hurried recall of a portion of the French troops was 
followed in June by a revolt in southern Tunisia. The bombardment and 
capture by the Mediterranean fleet of Sfax, the chief centre of insurrection 
(July 16), got the better of it. Kairwan, the holy city, was occupied with- 
out resistance (September), and thereafter order was not disturbed. The 
country still remains a protectorate under French control. 

France has not been so fortunate in its aim to reduce Morocco to the 
same condition. A scene of ever increasing anarchy, that country retains 
its independence only by reason of the rivalries of the European powers 
coveting it. The natural heir to the succession is France, which needs it 
for the security of its sway over the other Berber States. In addition to the 
chronic brigandage there, a claimant to the throne, who asserted he was 
the sultan's brother, began, towards the close of 1902, a civil war that has 
not yet come to an end. Aided by this condition, a bold marauder named 
Raisuli was able to levy with impunity large ransoms for captured foreigners. 
Raids across the border into Algeria compelled France to act, and by agree- 
ment with Spain and England, with the latter in consideration of France 
abandoning all claim on Egypt, France was authorized to invade Morocco 
and restore order there. Though the German government announced 
(April 12, 1904) that it had no objection to offer to the Anglo-French agree- 
ment, yet the dispatch in the following December of a French military 
mission to Fez elicited bitter attacks from the German press. That these 
had been inspired soon became clear. Chancellor von Bulow insisted on 
Germany having a free commerical hand in Morocco, and sent an agent to 
Fez who prevailed upon the sultan to reject the demands of France and to 
invite the powers to consider the situation in an international conference. 
They accepted only on condition that France was willing, and France was 
resolved not to enter a conference without assurances that its discussions 
should not affect her agreement with England and Spain. Later on the 
two governments agreed on a memorandum, and Germany withdrew its 
support from the sultan, who made full reparation to France. It was 
arranged to hold the proposed conference at Algeciras in Spain. There it 
sat and deliberated for two months and a half (January 16 — March 31, 
1906), and adopted a compromise settlement suggested by one of the United 
States delegates, as to the policing and financing of Morocco. Though 
Germany derived little advantage, yet France did not get its coveted exclu- 
sive protectorate. 



CHAPTER XLII 



France, Russia, and the Far East 



The Third Republic and the Paris Commune. — One of the articles 
of the protocol or preliminaries of peace putting an end to the Franco- 
German war stipulated that a National Assembly would be convened for 
the purpose of ratifying the final treaty. The elections, held on February 
8, 1871, returned about four hundred monarchists of various shades and 
three hundred and fifty equally variegated republicans. This result was 
largely accidental, for it was advocates of peace, and not professed poli- 
ticians, the people wanted. On the 13th, the first session of the new 
Assembly was opened at Bordeaux. Grevy was chosen to preside over 
the deliberations, and Thiers as executive head of the State. The latter 
was now a moderate republican; and though he had been prime minister 
under Louis Philippe, he had never been a monarchist. He made up 
his ministry of republicans and got the deputies to agree that, in view of 
the condition of France, the question of the ultimate form of government 
would remain in suspense. Such was the Bordeaux Pact (March 10, 
1871). By this time the preliminaries of peace had been ratified and on 
this day the Assembly decided to move to Versailles. Such a precaution 
was very soon justified by the attitude of Paris. The siege had left the 
capital in a violent state of overexcitement. During that period, more- 
over, the government had had to feed the population and pay the national 
guards. With peace both forms of aid disappeared. The revolutionary 
party, irritated at the complexion of the elections, turned this situation 
to account. On March 15 a central committee was formed with a view 
to rebellion. A troop ordered by Thiers to take from the Montmartre 
national guards the cannons still in their possession, deserted. Its com- 
mander. General Lecomte, and General Thomas, ex-chief officer of the 
national guards, were shot (March 18). Thiers at once evacuated Paris 
and even Mont Valerien, its strongest outside defence, which, fortunately, 
was almost immediately reoccupied. On March 26 the Central Committee 
held the election of the Commune, which was supposed to represent the 
insurrectional government and Paris; all the moderates chosen by various 
698 



France, Russia, and the Far East 699 

districts immediately withdrew and the Central Committee remained in 
existence. 

Bloodshed and Vandalism in Paris.— The Commune was made 
up of adherents of Jacobin socialism. In Paris it had at its disposal con- 
siderable resources, accumulated during the siege, and had with it the 
national guards (the federates), over whom it put improvised generals, 
remarkable especially for the brilliancy of their insignia. In the provinces 
efforts had been made in various cities in support of the Paris movement. 
At Saint-Etienne the prefect, De I'Epee, was assassinated. At Marseilles 
General Espivent had Gaston Cremieux, the leader of the local Commune, 
shot. In the early days of April calm was restored everywhere outside 
of Paris. This month, too, the army, commanded by Marshall MacMahon 
and made up especially of soldiers just back from Germany, was able to 
begin the siege of Paris. On the 3d a sally of the insurgents, made with 
the aim of marching on Versailles, was repulsed, and Flourens, one of 
their leaders, was slain. Then until May 21 Forts Issy and Vanves were 
bombarded and taken, while a powerful battery mounted at Montretout 
broke a breach through the western ramparts. During this time the 
Commune had been arresting, under the name of hostages, all prominent 
persons suspected of being hostile to it, especially priests, had closed the 
churches, suppressed opposition newspapers, demanded advances from 
the Bank of France, and, in sight of the Prussians still encamped to the 
east of Paris, tore down the Vendome column. On May 21 the troops 
penetrated into Paris through the unguarded Point-du-Jour breach. 
Then began a seven days' street battle (May 21-28) known as the Bloody 
Week. The insurgents shot all the hostages they could lay their hands 
upon — the arch-bishop of Paris, the presiding judge of the supreme court, 
many members of both the secular and the regular clergy, and gens d'armes, 
burned whole sections and palaces like the Tuileries, the Common Pleas 
courthouse, the City Hall, and the Ministry of Finances. The Louvre 
and the National Library barely escaped. The exasperated troops killed 
very many, but the prisoners were far more numerous than the slain. 
They were tried by councils of war that convicted and sentenced several 
thousand of them, but very few to death. About seventy-five hundred 
of the convicts were sent to New Caledonia. 

Thiers and MacMahon Presidents. — On August 31 the Assembly 
declared itself a constituent body and elected Thiers President of a pro- 
visional Republic. He had to concern himself above all with obtaining 
the evacuation of the territory occupied as a guarantee for the payment 



700 France, Russia, and the Far East 

of the war indemnity. Two loans, one of two milliards (June, 1871) 
and the other of three (July, 1872), easily covered (the latter twelve times) 
furnished the necessary funds. An agreement reached on October 12, 1871 
reduced the number of occupied departments to twelve, and the army of 
occupation (at the expense of the French treasury) to fifty thousand men. 
Another on June 29, 1872, stipulated the evacuation of six departments. 
Yet it was only on September 20, 1873, after the fall of Thiers, that the 
last Prussians left French soil. To meet the enormously increased cost 
of the national debt, new taxes were imposed, nearly all indirect. The 
army had to be reorganized. For this purpose the Prussian system of 
obligatory and universal service was introduced into France (1872), and 
active service was fixed at five years. Young men possessed of certain 
diplomas had the privilege of serving only one year for a payment of three 
hundred dollars. But this volunteership was abolished in 1889. Mobili- 
zation was organized according to rules in relation to the new constitution 
of the army, and the territory was divided into nineteen (now twenty) 
army districts. 

The Right, anxious to restore monarchy, saw ever more clearly that 
Thiers was wholly opposed to this project. Accordingly, towards the 
close of 1872 relations between the President and the majority became 
strained. The latter began by getting rid of its president, Grevy, who 
was succeeded by Buffet; and then, Paris having elected (April 27, 1873) 
a Radical over Thier's personal candidate, it censured the policy to which 
it attributed this check. Thiers at once resigned and was succeeded that 
same evening (May 24) by Marshal MacMahon, a choice that had been 
decided upon some time before. In the Assembly there was a majority 
sufficient to restore monarchy if all its members could agree on retaining 
the tricolor flag. The new president declared, moreover, that such a 
restoration was otherwise impossible. The count of Paris, head of the 
Orleans house, had brought about fusion by going to Frohsdorf (the Aus- 
trian residence of the count of Chambord), on August 5, to recognize the 
head of the elder branch as "the only representative of the monarchical 
party in France." The two princes came to an understanding on every 
question but that of the flag, on which the monarchists hoped Chambord 
would yield, and this Pius IX advised him to do. But in a manifesto 
issued on October 27 Henry V, as his followers called him, declared he 
would ascend the throne only with the white flag. 

Organization of the Septennate. — From that time restoration 
became impossible. On November 20 a law was enacted, giving the 
presidency of the republic to MacMahon for seven years. This was the 



France, Russia, and the Far East 701 

Septennate. A committee of thirty began to formulate a constitution, 
and only in 1875 presented a draft that was adopted. This constitution, 
which, with a few changes made in 1884, still rules France, had been 
formulated in such a way as to suit either a republic or a parliamentary 
monarchy. The President of the Republic was to be elected for seven 
years by the two Chambers in joint session called a Congress. His powers 
were and are those of a parliamentary king. He cannot veto bills, he 
can only demand a second deliberation on them, and to dissolve the Cham- 
ber he must have the consent of the Senate. The Senate was to consist 
of seventy-five life members, chosen first by the Assembly and afterwards 
by itself, and of two hundred and twenty-five elected for nine years, one- 
third every three years. The first third, therefore, served only three, 
and the second six years, those of the two short terms being chosen by 
lot. They are elected not directly by the people, but by the municipal 
and department councillors. The deputies are chosen for four years 
by universal suffrage and single-member districts. By the terms of the 
constitution of 1875 the Senate and the Chamber have coordinate powers. 
Yet the former can, at the request of the President, dissolve the latter, 
which has not the reciprocal power, but, then, all financial measures must 
originate in the Chamber of Deputies. The Senate may act as a high 
court of justice. The ministers, in accordance with the custom of parlia- 
mentary States, form a cabinet, that is, are jointly responsible for their 
policy. They must in theory resign in the face of an adverse vote of one 
of the Houses. In fact, with a single exception (in 1896), they have never 
been overthrown but by the Chamber of Deputies. In short, according 
to the constitution of 1875, the essentials of power belong to this House. 
The constitution may be amended, but only by both Chambers sitting 
in Congress. The custom has been established that the Congress con- 
fine itself to examining the changes on which the two Assemblies have 
previously agreed. 

The Republican Party in Power. — The Assembly came to an end 
on December 31, 1875, after having enacted various other laws, the most 
important of which was that establishing freedom of higher education, 
which has remained in force except as to the abolition a few years later 
of mixed juries for the conferring of university degrees. For two years 
prior to the adoption of this constitution the elections had been generally 
Republican. Now the first under the new order gave a Republican 
majority of over two to one in the Chamber of Deputies, and in the Senate 
the extreme royalists (Legitimists) had helped to make a majority of the 
life members Republican, so that in the whole body the Right held only a 



702 France, Russia, and the Far East 

very slight advantage. The President chose a Left Centre ministry, and 
in a short time another of the same shade; but on May i6, 1877, had recourse 
to the Right. The Chamber was first adjourned, and then dissolved; 
but, in spite of the government's influence, the Republicans made slight 
gains. Thiers had died suddenly during this campaign. MacMahon 
yielded and appointed another Left Centre cabinet (December 14). When 
the elections of January, 1879, gave the Republicans the upper hand in 
the Senate the Marshal resigned the presidency, and the Congress chose 
(January 30) the presiding officer of the Chamber, Jules Grevy, as his 
successor. The office thus left vacant v^as given to Leon Gambetta, 
vi^ho, after Thier's death, had become the leader of the Republican party. 
From this time the Left, made up of various factions (Left Centre, Repub- 
lican Left, and Republican Union, the last named being especially Gam- 
betta's group), was absolute master of power. As Gambetta had said 
that reforms should be brought about only as they were opportune, his 
enemies called his followers Opportunists. 

Naturally the new power strove to destroy the political work of the 
National Assembly. An amnesty, voted on two occasions, brought back 
the exiles of the Commune. The Chambers returned to Paris (June, 
1879). The Congress alone might, if need be continue to assemble at 
Versailles. A great scheme of public works, imagined by De Freycinet, 
was voted, and the feast of July 14 (anniversary of the fall of the Bastile) 
was instituted (1880). On the other hand, Jules Ferry, minister of public 
instruction, on the occasion of a bill depriving the Catholic universities 
of the privilege of conferring degrees, got the Chamber to approve a famous 
provision (Article VII) forbidding unauthorized religious orders to teach. 
When the Senate rejected Article VII the minister, by virtue of old laws, 
had the religious houses closed, first those of the Jesuits, and then of various 
other orders (1880). In the same order of ideas must be mentioned the 
law on the secondary education of girls (December, 1880) and the various 
laws making primary instruction gratuitous, obligatory, and, after a cer- 
tain date, wholly lay (188 1 to 1886). 

Political Incidents of Grevy's Term. — The elections of 188 1 reduced 
the Right to ninety seats. The Prince Imperial's death (1879) had demoral- 
ized the Bonapartist party. Then Gambetta assumed power in person 
and from among his friends formed what was called the Great Ministry. 
He was overthrown almost immediately (January 30, 1882) by his adver- 
saries of the Left, who were jealous of him, and, especially, very much 
dissatisfied with his having manifested the intention of withdrawing local 
office-holders from the control of the Deputies (November 4, 1881). Gam- 



France, Russia, and the Far East 703 

betta died from a pistol-shot wound in the hand on December 31, 1882. 
After two brief ministries that witnessed, without interfering in the occupa- 
tion of Egypt by the Enghsh there came the Ferry ministry (February 21, 
1883, March 30, 1885), the most long-Hved so far and for many years 
after. In August, 1884, it had the constitution revised on the special 
point of the Senate's organization — life memberships were to be abolished 
as their occupants died, and the communes had more or less voice in the 
elections according to their importance. The law on divorce (1884), 
and the elimination of highly esteemed judges hostile to the government 
(1883) belong to the same period. Jules Ferry had the merit, which 
all parties appreciated, of being an ardent patriot. Having no hope for 
the time being of regaining Alsace and Lorraine, he had turned towards 
the idea of finding compensations beyond sea. Already in 1881 he had 
conquered Tunisia. The Tonkin war brought on his fall (March 30) 
in consequence of a temporary check suffered by the French troops, an 
incident to his disadvantage by his political adversaries, especially the 
Radicals. The fall of the Ferry ministry was followed by elections which, 
it had been easy to foresee, returned about two hundred Conservatives. 
This result gave rise to fears which were expressed in a law (1886) expelling 
from French territory the heads of former reigning families and their eldest 
sons. As, on the other hand, the Republicans and the Radicals formed 
two hostile groups, the situation became very unstable. It was further 
aggravated when Grevy was compelled (December i, 1887) to resign in 
consequence of a scandalous trial in which his son-in-law (Wilson) had 
been implicated. 

The Boulanger Fiasco and the Panama Scandal. — ^The Congress 
would probably have elected Jules Ferry had not the hostile attitude of 
the Radicals, supported by Paris, eliminated him as a candidate. Sadi- 
Carnot, grandson of the famous Conventionist, was chosen. Carnot's 
presidency was marked by the adoption (1889) of the present military law, 
and still more by very serious political turmoils. The first in order of these 
was the Boulanger crisis. General Boulanger, made minister of war in 
1886 by the support of the Radicals, succeeded in winning a personal 
popularity which he strove to turn to account by grouping around him the 
various parties hostile to those then in power. Deprived of his office and 
sent into retirement, he had himself elected triumphantly in the Nord, and 
then (January 27, 1889) at Paris. To combat him the Tirard ministry, 
whose real head was M. Constans, undertook, on the one hand, to change 
the election laws and keep a man from being a candidate in more than one 
district, and, on the other, to have the Senate, as High Court, prosecute the 



704 France, Russia, and the Far East 

general, as well as Rochefort and Count Dillon. All three fled. The 
very successful exposition of 1889 further strengthened the government, 
which won a complete victory in the general elections of that year. Two 
years later Boulanger committed suicide in Belgium for purely personal 
reasons. The rebuff to the methods of Boulanger brought about soon 
afterwards the formation of a new party, that of the Rallied Catholics who 
abandoned the cause of monarchy to accept the republic. The initiative 
in this movement had come from Pope Leo XIII (1892). In this same year 
there broke out the Panama scandal, which brought into deep disgrace a 
large number of prominent politicians. The French Panama Company, as 
stated elsewhere, had suspended payment in 1889, and an investigation was 
made as to how its money had been spent. In consequence of the findings, 
criminal proceedings on behalf of the French government were instituted 
(November, 1892) against the leading officers of the canal company. 
Leading French officials also were convicted of bribery. In the two 
following years there was a succession of anarchist outrages, which had 
begun already in 1892. On June 24, 1894, the President was assassinated 
at Lyons by an Italian, Caserio, who said he was the instrument of an 
anarchist group. 

The Dreyfus Outrage and Rehabilitation. — Casimir Perier, grand- 
son of Louis Philippe's famous prime minister, was chosen as successor to 
Carnot; but, for reasons that have remained obscure, he resigned on January 
15, 1895. During his brief term was perpetrated one of the grossest outrages 
to be found recorded even in French history. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew of 
Alsacian birth, an artillery captain on the army staff", was accused of writing 
an unsigned and undated letter that reached the ministry of war in Septem- 
ber, 1894, announcing to a foreign agent the sending of four notes and, 
conditionally, of the shooting practice manual then in use. He was arrested 
and tried behind closed doors (December 19-22) by a council of war that 
unanimously condemned him to military degradation and confinement in a 
colonial fortress. After review of the trial had been refused him, he was 
degraded and sent to French Guiana and consigned there to solitary confine- 
ment on Devil's Island, where he never ceased to protest his innocence and to 
demand a new trial. He was subjected to such treatment as, it was hoped, 
would shorten his days. The public intervention in his favor (1897) of 
Senator Scheurer-Kestner, who had got private information of the manner 
of his conviction from Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart, at the time head of the 
information bureau, who said also that the real traitor was Walsin Esterhazy, 
a commandant of infantry, and the denunciation of the latter by Mathieu 
Dreyfus, the condemned man's brother, was the starting point of an ardent 



France, Russia, and the Far East 705 

revisionist campaign and of events that had a powerful influence on the 
internal politics of France. Commandant Esterhazy vv^as tried on related 
charges, but not on the chief fact, by a council of war that unanimously 
acquitted him (1898). Emile Zola, who accused this council of having 
acquitted the commandant "to order," was dragged into the assize court and 
was condemned to a year's imprisonment and a fine of three thousand 
francs, a sentence that was quashed on April 2, 1898. An important 
witness for the prosecution in the 1894 trial, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry, 
confessed that he himself had forged a document in November, 1896, which, 
on July 7, 1898, Minister Cavaignac read to the Chamber as authentic, and 
which tended to prove that Dreyfus was indeed a traitor. Arrested and 
sent to Mont Valerien, Colonel Henry committed suicide there. The 
Brisson cabinet authorized a review of the Dreyfus trial. After some delay 
due to formalities, in the spring of 1899 the court of appeals, holding the 
"bordereau" (incriminating letter) to be Esterhazy's, ordered a new court 
martial. Dreyfus was brought home and given over to the council of war 
at Rennes (August 7-September 9, 1899), which, by five votes to two, 
again declared him guilty, but admitted extenuating circumstances. By 
the same vote the court sentenced him to ten years' imprisonment; but 
President Loubet remitted the sentence. On the strength of new evidence 
obtained by M. Bunau-Varilla (who had negotiated the sale of the French 
Panama canal interests to the United States), in the spring of 1906 the 
Dreyfus case was again brought before the court of appeals, which fully 
exonerated the accused. Then, in July, both Dreyfus and Picquart were 
given the rank in the army to which they would by this time have advanced 
in the due order of promotion. 

Separation of Church and State in France.— The policy of the 
conservative majority in the National Assembly of aiming at a monarchical 
restoration alienated from it all Frenchmen who wanted no more of the old 
dynasties; and as these conservatives were for the most part practical 
Catholics, the voters supported republican candidates who were either 
indifferent or hostile to religion. Therefore it was that Jules Ferry's anti- 
Catholic measures became laws. An impetus was given to this movement 
by the monarchists allying themselves with Boulanger, and another and more 
powerful one by their abetting the Dreyfus conspiracy. The feeling against 
them became intense on the occasion of Dreyfus's second trial, and helped 
to bring about the total suppression of the religious orders in pursuance 
of a law passed by the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry (July i, 1901). That law 
was carried into effect by the Combes ministry with far more severity than 
its author had intended; and before the end of 1903 Premier Combes 
45 



7o6 France, Russia, and the Far East 

announced as part of his programme the total separation of the State and 
the Churches. Then the Chambers passed a bill to suppress instruction by 
members of religious orders within ten years, and the action of the Vatican, 
which seemed not unwilling to bring matters to a crisis, strengthened the 
hands of those who desired a rupture with the Holy See. On April 24, 
1904, President Loubet paid his return visit to the king of Italy at Rome. 
This action by the head of a Catholic State was resented by the Pope, who 
sent a protest which the government decided to regard as null. On May 
24 it was resolved to recall the French ambassador to the Vatican, but to 
leave a charge d'AfFaires to conduct the business of the embassy. The 
crisis became more acute with the publication, on July 12, of the documents 
in the case of the disputes with Rome over the above affair, the conduct of 
certain bishops, and the filling of vacant Sees. On July 30 the Papal nuncio 
left Paris, and the French charge left Rome. Then the demand for the 
repeal of the Concordat of 1801 and the separation of Church and State 
became louder and more insistent than ever. A separation bill became a 
law in 1905, and went into force on January i, 1906. The carrying out of 
its administrative provisions created disorder in many places, but the 
general election of members of the Chamber of Deputies in May was 
seemingly an overwhelming approval of the government's course. One 
advantage of the measure has been already shown in that the Pope has been 
able to fill a large number of vacant Sees for which he could not accept 
the government's nominees. 

France in Indo-China. — As far back as 1787 France obtained a foot- 
hold in Annam (Tourane Bay and the Pulo-Condore archipelago). It had 
almost lost its claims there when Napoleon III sent an expedition that 
recovered Tourane (1858), and then seized Saigon (1859). Chinese affairs 
occupied the French until 1861, when they completed the conquest of lower 
Cochin China, and in 1863 the emperor of Annam ceded to France the three 
provinces of Saigon, Mytho and Bien Hoa, as well as the Pulo-Condore 
archipelago and his rights over Cambodia. The new conquest was soon 
increased by the acquisition of the protectorate of Cambodia, a once power- 
ful kingdom that had fallen under the suzerainty of Siam and of Annam. 
The Siamese had just once more robbed it of two rich provinces, Battambang 
and Angkor. The new king, Norodom, was persuaded to accept the 
guardianship of France (1863), but the French government later on (1867) 
left to Siam the important provinces the latter had usurped. South of the 
country that he had ceded to France, the emperor of Annam had retained 
the territories of Vinh-long, Chaudoc and Ha-tien. So as to get rid of the 
pirate bands instigated by the Hue court, the French occupied that region 



France, Russia, and the Far East 707 

in 1867, and French Cochin China was constituted such as it is at present. 
From an early date the French meant to utiHze the highway of the Mekong 
river to penetrate to Laos, and thence to the southern provinces of China. 
This was the object of an expedition from Saigon in 1866 that went up the 
river into Yun-nan. It was then found that the water of the Tonkin was a 
better route, and expeditions were made by that way (1870-3). In the 
latter year Hanoi was captured, and in 1874 France established a protector- 
ate over Annam, w^here the fullest religious liberty was promised to the 
missionaries and their neophytes. But the country had to be conquered a 
second time, and v/ith considerable difficulty, in 1883-4. In the latter 
year France had a vvar with China over Annam and Tonkin, which it won, 
and, then (1885) seized the Pescadores islands, commanding the Formosa 
strait, but soon afterwards relinquished them. Annam then became 
completely subject to France, and by 1897 French Indo-China was consti- 
tuted as it is now. 

The Japanese before Their Revolution.— While France was thus 
acquiring a colonial empire in the south, a new power was rising in the north. 
The Empire of the Rising Sun, as it styles itself, is thoroughly different 
from the Chinese empire. In the latter, society is made up essentially of 
small farmers by no means militarily disposed, ruled by an aristocracy of 
literates that is no more so. The Japanese, on the contrary, coming at 
least twenty centuries ago from the neighboring mainland coast or the 
Malay archipelago, through long centuries of struggle won from the natives 
the country which they now inhabit. This is why we find in them a patriot- 
ism and a warlike character generally absent in the Chinese. After having 
driven the Ainos, the primitive race, into the island of Yezo, which they 
still partly people, the Samurai, that is, the military class, and their feudal 
lords, the Daimio, like the great European barons of the Middle Ages, 
waged intestine quarrels in which the power of the sovereign (Mikado or 
Tenno) dwindled to insignificance. At last, in the sixteenth century, order 
was restored by three superior men, Nobunaga, Hideyoshi (also called 
Taikosama) and Leyas. The last named (who died in 16 16) made the 
dignity of Shogun (generalissimo) hereditary in his family and organized 
a semi-feudal, semi-monarchical government. The Daimios continued to 
rule their fiefs, of very variable extent, but were in close dependence on the 
Shogun, residing at Yeddo. He, the real master of power, was supposed 
to be subordinate to the emperor or Tenno, shut up in his palace at Kioto 
and reduced to the role of a sluggard king. At the same time Christianity, 
which Spanish and Portuguese missionaries had propagated in the archi- 
pelago, was exterminated by terrible persecutions and the country closed 



7o8 France, Russia, and the Far East 

against foreigners. Only the Dutch were tolerated, and that only at 
Nagasaki. Even there they were confined to an islet which they were 
forbidden to leave. This voluntary isolation could not last. In 1853 
Commodore Perry of the United States navy summoned the Shogun to 
grant commercial liberty and free residence to foreigners. The latter 
yielded and to that effect signed a treaty on March 31, 1854. Through 
the breach thus opened France and England passed in their turn (1857-8). 
But the warlike aristocracy rebelled against this weakness and appealed 
to Mikado Komei, father of the present emperor. He, feeling he had 
support, forced his mayor of the palace to come and do him homage at 
Kioto, and promise him he would expel the barbarians. The Daimio of 
Choshiu, one of the most powerful of the southern barons, having thereupon 
tried to close the Shimonoseki strait against navigation, an international 
fleet went and bombarded the forts, which they destroyed in a few hours 
(September 5, 1864). 

The Great Revolution in Japan. — ^Then came a strange, but in 
reality thoroughly logical, revolution. Komei died on February 3, 1867, 
and leaving the throne to a boy of fifteen, Muts-Hito the present emperor, 
the Samurai, who were the real masters of the country (for most of the 
Daimios, far from capable, let themselves be governed by the influential 
men of their clan), compelled the Shogun (Taikun or regent, he styled 
himself to foreigners) and the Daimios themselves to abdicate (1868-9). 
The Mikado, thereafter sole head of a centralized empire, took up his 
residence at Yeddo, whose name was changed to Tokio (November 26, 
1868). It was hatred of foreigners or the desire to preserve the independence 
of the country that had brought about these events. But the Japanese were 
keen enough to see that, if they were to hold out agr.inst Europe, they must 
first borrow from it its military weapons and knowledge. The result was, 
and this fact is most creditable to their intelligence, that they undertook to 
appropriate European civilization wholly to themselves and that, instead of 
excluding Europeans, as they had at first wished to do, they called them in 
to serve as educators. Under the direction of remarkable ministers, and 
especially of Prince Iwakura, Japan passed, in a few years, from the condi- 
tion of a mediaeval to that of a modern state. Administration, justice, army 
and finances became like to those of the western states. A powerful war 
fleet (as shall be seen presently) was created. Railroads intersected the 
country. Public instruction was organized on European and Am.erican 
models. Provincial assembhes were created in 1878. A constitution, 
copied from that of England, was granted on February 11, 1889. The new 
regime, however, though constitutional, is not parliamentary. Lastly, 





Baron Von Humboldt. 



Louis Agassiz. 





Charles Darwin. Pasteur in Plis Laboratory. 

GREAT SCIENTISTS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 





Leon Gambetta. 



M. Armand Fallieres. 








Adolphe Thiers. Ferdinand Do Lesseps. 

EMINETSTT MEN OF MODERN FRANCE. 



France, Russia, and the Far East 709 

Japan has become industrial. There are over half a million spindles in 
its mills, and its products are exported to Europe and America. This is 
perhaps the most astonishing transformation to be found in history. It 
has made Japan a really great power. 

The China- Japan or "Yellow" War.— During the whole of this 
transformation period Japan, with remarkable prudence, had avoided all 
external conflicts. Three instances of friction with China and Russia, 
about Formosa, Korea and Sakhalin, had been settled by compromises. 
This moderation had even led the extreme patriots to rise in an insurrection 
known as the Satzuma revolt. It was suppressed and cost the life of its 
leader, the popular Marshal Saigo (September, 1877). Japan had very 
old claims on Korea, a country which China regarded as its vassal. By 
treaty (April, 1885) the two powers had agreed never to intervene separately 
in the aff^airs of that country. But the famous viceroy of Pechili, Li Hung 
Chang, having organized an army and a fleet on the European plan in his 
government, thought he was strong enough to violate the agreement. The 
Japanese government, urged, moreover, by home troubles, seized this 
pretext for war (July, 1894). In material strength there seemed perhaps 
to be a slight advantage on the side of China. But morally Japan's superior- 
ity was overwhelming, as was soon shown. Hostilities were begun on July 
25 by the destruction of the Kow-Shing, which was carrying Chinese troops 
to Korea. Then the Chinese fleet was partly destroyed by Admiral Ito at 
the mouth of the Yalu (September 17). What was left of it took refuge at 
Wei-Hai-Wei, at the entrance to the Gulf of Pechili. It was later on to be 
captured there when that place was taken. A Japanese army, under 
Marshal Yamagata, already occupied Korea. After a victory at Ping- 
yang (September 15) it invaded Manchuria. Another Japanese general, 
Marshal Oyama, took Port Arthur by assault on November 21. Wei-Hai- 
Wei, on the other side of the strait, succumbed on February 14, 1895. 
Every road to Pekin was open. Already, in October and November, 
China had tried to treat, first through England and then through all the 
powers. In January, 1895, Li Hung Chang himself went to Japan. By 
various pretexts the Japanese made negotiations drag so as to improve their 
position by fresh successes. In March, when Li Hung Chang returned to 
negotiate at Shimonoseki, he was asked to give up Taku, Tien-tsin and 
Shan-Hai-Kwan as the price of an armistice. On March 21 a fanatic 
wounded Li with a revolver shot, and this incident enabled the Mikado's 
ministers to resist the radical party, which was urging them to extreme 
demands. On April 14 the treaty of Shimonoseki was signed, and on 
May 8 ratified. Its conditions were hard enough. China acknowledged 



710 France, Russia, and the Far East 

the independence of Korea, ceded the Liao-tung peninsula with Port 
Arthur and Niu-Chwang, Formosa and the Pescadores. It agreed to pay a 
war indemnity of two hundred million taels, with temporary cession of Wei- 
Hai-Wei as guarantee. In addition the Japanese obtained the opening of 
several new ports and the navigation of the upper Yang-tse, and were per- 
mitted to settle in China on specially easy conditions for carrying on all sorts 
of trades and industries there. 

Partition of China and Boxer Rebellion. — If this treaty had been 
carried out Japan, as owner of Liao-tung, would hold northern China with 
Pekin in its grip. England, anxious to block Russia, wanted nothing else. 
But France, Germany, and Russia agreed to get the victor to abandon this 
conquest (April 22, 1895). Japan, realizing that it was impossible to resist, 
yielded on May 10. By an act dated November 8 it restored Liao-tung to 
China for a supplementary sum of thirty million taels. The powers had 
already pointed out that, as the Formosa strait was an international high- 
way, Japan could not take advantage either of the possession of Formosa or 
of the Pescadores to exercise any special authority in the neighboring seas. 
All these incidents had shown the utter weakness of the Chinese empire. 
Russia was the first to take advantage of the situation. In 1888 Alexander 
III had ordered the building of the Trans-Siberian railroad, work on which 
was begun (1891) simultaneously at both extremities. Having guaranteed 
the Chinese loan necessitated by the war indemnity, the Russians obtained 
the right to have their railroad pass from Vladivostock through Manchuria, 
a step which brought that province under their control. On the other hand, 
they forced the Japanese to leave Korea and to acknowledge the indepen- 
dence of that country. On its part Germany seized (November 17, 1897) 
the magnificent harbor of Kiao-cheou, with the right of influence over the 
province of Shan-tung. Russia answered by occupying Port Arthur. Eng- 
land took to itself, without knowing by what title, preponderance in the 
Yang-tse basin and settled down at Wei-Hai-Wei. France meant to reserve 
to its influence the southern provinces, which, moreover, England was 
quietly disputing. Even Italy wished to have San-mun bay ceded to it. 

The Chinese government, [directed since 1861 by a remarkably 
energetic and intelligent woman, Tse-Hy (also called Si-tay-Heu, " Empress 
of the West"), widow of Hien-Fong, who became the actual ruler when 
(September 2, 1898) she imprisoned the present emperor, Kwang-su,] 
yielded to a certain extent. Most of the rivers, as well as a large number of 
ports, were opened to commerce. Many railroad routes were conceded to 
English, German, French and Belgian companies. The system adopted by 
the empress and her advisers was to let progress penetrate very slowly, so 



France, Russia, and the Far East 711 

that the national life would not be disturbed; but the people showed open 
hostility. A secret society, called by Europeans, the Boxers, rose in rebellion 
early in 1900, swept over the northeastern provinces, and murdered many 
Europeans and native Christians. The empress and the Manchu element 
of her court at first opposed, but afterwards encouraged, the movement, 
and the latter course culminated in the murder of the German minister at 
Pekin, the destruction of several of the legations, and the siege of over two 
hundred foreign refugees in the British official residence there. The 
United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Japan united 
in sending a relief expedition which had to fight its way hard from the Taku 
forts, and especially at Tien-tsin, and which, on August 14, succeeded in 
relieving the besieged. The court had fled, and the allies remained in 
possession until September 7, 1901, when peace had been signed and 
China was compelled to pay an indemnity of ^320,000,000. But for the 
United States the European powers would then have taken territory from 
China, and it was with reluctance that they accepted our "Open Door" 
policy. 

Russian Advance in Asia. — In 1839 Russia began to move towards 
India by a new route. Khivans and other Turkish horsemen had long been 
making slave-hunting raids westward, sometimes as far as the Volga. Late 
in 1839 General Perovskii, governor of Orenburg, organized an expedition 
against Khiva, but was able to go only halfway, and returned the following 
spring after having lost one-third of his men and all his baggage without even 
having seen the enemy. The next eflFort in that direction was made only in 
1852, when one body of Russians went from Orenburg to the mouth of the 
Sir-Daria, along which it ascended, and another conquered the Lake Bal- 
kash province (Semiretchie), with the city of Viernoe. In 1861 the Russian 
frontier reached Hazret in Turkestan, in 1864 Chemkend was conquered, 
then Tashkend, which became the Russian capital in 1865, and Khodjend 
in 1866. Two years later General Kaufmann occupied Samarcand, 
Timur's capital of old. From this point Bokhara was at his mercy, and its 
ruler, defeated and menaced in his capital, declared himself the czar's 
vassal. In 1873-5 the Russians annexed Khokand province, and in the 
latter year Khiva succumbed, and its khan became a vassal for only kalf of 
his former dominion. In Chinese Turkestan the Russians had occupied 
Kuldja temporarily (1871), but ten years later restored the city and most 
of the province. First from Krasnovodsk (1869), east of the Caspian, then 
from Mikhailovsk, and lastly from Uzun Ada, the Russians controlled the 
steppes south of Khiva. In 1870 they had obtained from Persia the Atrek 
frontier, which was modified in 1882; but the Turkmans of the northern 



712 France, Russia, and the Far East 

slope of Kopet Dagh (oases of the Akhal) had to be subdued. A first 
attempt failed, and the building of the Trans-Caspian railroad was begun. 
It was to facilitate the siege of the great hostile citadel, Goek Tepe, defended 
by twenty thousand men behind walls on which shells made no impression. 
General Skobelef made a breach by mining, and took the place by assault 
amid terrible carnage, thus putting an end to resistance in the oases. In 
1884 the great oasis of Merv submitted to Russia, thus giving entrance to a 
cultivated region on the road leading direct to Herat, the occupation of 
which the English had declared they would resent with war. In 1885 the 
taking possession of Saraks, on the same river as Herat, made Great Britain 
extremely uneasy. Accordingly, a conflict came near taking place next 
year over Pendjeh, in the upper valley of the Murg-ab. The Afghans, 
probably on behalf of England, attacked General Komarof, but were com- 
pletely routed. England protested and assumed a warlike attitude, but soon 
calmed down. Finally a mixed commission marked the boundary between 
Afghanistan and Russian Turkistan, Russia keeping the disputed territories. 
The building of the Trans-Caspian road (begun in 1880) considerably 
increased Russia's offensive strength. By it and its branchings the Afghan 
frontier is reached at three points. Shrewd in its relations with the natives, 
Russian authority has won them over, and would have no diflSculty, in case 
it wished, to draw all the warlike Turkish tribes towards the Indus. By 
the treaty of Nertchinsk (1689) Russia had abandoned the Sakhalin basin. 
Therefore it had access to the Pacific only through the sea of Okhotsk; but 
in 1854-7 it occupied the whole Amour region, and next year made that 
river its Chinese frontier. In i860 the province between the Ussuri and 
the sea became Russian territory. At its southern extremity was built a 
war port with the ambitious name of Vladivostok ("Mistress of the Orient"). 
This gave Russia a commanding position in regard to Manchuria and 
Korea. In addition, in 1875 it obtained from Japan, in exchange for the 
Kuriles, the southern half of Sakhalin. How long it was to keep it will be 
seen presently. 

The Russian- Japanese War. — During the "Boxer" troubles Russia 
garrisoned Manchuria to protect, it said, its railroad and other interests 
there, at the same time promising to evacuate the country as soon as 
peace was restored. This promise it did not keep, and, after long nego- 
tiations, it entered into an agreement (1902) to evacuate at a certain time. 
That time having elapsed (1903), not only did it not leave, but seemed to be 
strengthening its hold and disposed also to work its way mto Korea, which 
it was of vital interest to Japan to keep independent of Russian control. 
A Russian company had secured from Korea timber-cutting rights on the 



France, Russia, and the Far East 713 

Yalu, and Russia roused Japan's suspicion by pressing for a concession of 
land on that river, while opposing the opening of Wiju to foreign trade. On 
August 12 direct negotiations between Russia and Japan were opened at 
St. Petersburg and afterwards continued at Tokio. This tedious diplomacy, 
merely dilatory on Russia's part, severely taxed the patience of the Japanese. 
At last convinced that there was no hope of a peaceful settlement, on Feb- 
ruary 6 the Tokio government announced the rupture of diplomatic rela- 
tions, and at once began hostilities with a midnight attack (February 8) 
by Togo's squadron on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur, torpedoing two 
battleships and a cruiser. The attack was renewed next day, when a 
battleship and three cruisers were injured; and on the same day a cruiser 
and a gunboat were destroyed at Chemulpo in Korea. The rest of the 
Russian Yellow Sea fleet was "bottled up" by the blockade of Port Arthur, 
which was first bombarded on March 21-22. Kamimura had bombarded 
Vladivostok twelve days before. Meanwhile Japanese soldiers had con- 
stantly been landing in Korea. They fought their first skirmish at Cheng- 
ju (March 28), and on April 6 occupied Wiju, when the Russians retreated 
across the Yalu river. One week later the Russian squadron was decoyed 
out of Port Arthur, and Admiral Makaroff^ was drowned when his torpedoed 
flagship sank. On April 29-30 and May i the Russians were driven from 
the Yalu by Kuroki, and on May 5, the Japanese began to land on the 
Liao-tung peninsula, where, after the battle of Kin-chau (May 27), they 
next day completely cut off^ Port Arthur on the land side, and occupied 
Dalny two days later. On June 14-15 a Russian force sent south to relieve 
Port Arthur was defeated in the battle of Telisau or Wa-fang-kau. There- 
after there was, severe fighting around Port Arthur, almost continually by 
land and occasionally by sea, the Japanese land forces gradually advancing 
towards it. On August 10 the Russian fleet, issuing from Port Arthur, was 
defeated and dispersed, only a few of the ships returning. Meanwhile 
the Japanese had been steadily advancing elsewhere until, on August 3, 
General Oku occupied Hai-cheng and Niu-chwang. 

Period of This War's Great Battles. — The Russians, under General 
Kuropatkin, had been concentrating their slowly available forces at Liao- 
yang, where the Japanese attacked them on August 24. There until 
September 4 there was continuous and severe fighting, when the worsted 
Russians were forced to fall back upon Mukden, the ancient capital of 
Manchuria. On October 2 Kuropatkin's order of the day announced that 
the Russians were strong enough to attack, and on the loth they began to 
advance, leading to the battle of the Sha-ho. Three days later the Russians 
retreated to the north of that river, after having suflFered heavy loss. The 



714 France, Russia, and the Far East 

fighting there was continued until the i6th, when the Russians, after losing 
forty-five thousand men on the Sha-ho, once more retreated. Both armies 
passed the winter intrenched in snow and ice, amid great suflFering, especi- 
ally for the Russians, for whose supply the Trans-Siberian railroad (a 
single-track line) proved inadequate. There had been many isolated minor 
conflicts, especially at sea, but the hardest fighting had been around Port 
Arthur, whose defences had nearly all been captured by December 31, leav- 
ing it at the besiegers' mercy. Further slaughter and destruction of property 
were stopped there by surrender on New Year's Day, 1905, after which the 
besieging army was able to go and reinforce the Japanese in the north. 
There the Russians under Grippenberg were repulsed at Hei-kau-tai 
(January 25-29). On February 23 operations against Mukden were begun, 
which ended with the occupation of the city on March 10. A week later 
Kuropatkin was superseded by Linevitch a Russian commander-in-chief; 
but the Japanese kept on advancing steadily, though unable to engage the 
enemy again in a great battle. Ever since the destruction of the Port 
Arthur fleet the Russian government had been preparing to send its Baltic 
squadron to the Far East. Under Admiral Rozhdestvensky its sections 
united at Kamranh Bay in Tonkin, whence, after a protest from Japan of 
violation of neutrality by France, it departed on April 22. Five weeks later 
(May 27-28) it was annihilated by Togo just inside the southern entrance 
to the Sea of Japan (battle of Tsushima), and what was left of the Vladivos- 
tok squadron was helpless. Then President Roosevelt took a bold step. 
On June 8 he invited Russia and Japan to negotiate. Japan accepted on 
the loth, and Russia on the 14th. Before their plenipotentiaries could meet 
there was more severe fighting in Manchuria (June 16 and 19) and a 
Japanese force had occupied Sakhalin (July 8-31). On August 9 the peace 
conference was opened at Portsmouth, N. H. (U. S.), and, the Russians refus- 
ing demand for indemnity, was protracted until the 29th, when, again at the 
urging of our President, complete agreement was reached, Japan waiving 
demand for indemnity and accepting half of Sakhalin. On September 5 
the treaty was signed by the plenipotentiaries, and on October 15 by the 
Czar and the Mikado. Since then Japan has assumed complete control 
in Korea and. has pledged itself to open Manchurian trade to all nations on 
equal terms. 

Revolutionary Turmoil in Russia. — ^With her resources severely 
taxed by this war, one of the most important of modern times, Russia had 
at the same time to deal Vv^ith an internal crisis of the gravest character. It 
was but the aggravation of a condition that had been growing for years, 
fostered by the reactionary tyranny of Alexander III, and scarcely, if at 



France, Russia, and the Far East 715 

all, alleviated by the well-meaning, but weak, Nicholas II (emperor since 
1894). His manifesto of March ii, 1903, promising in vague terms a 
reform of local government and tolerance in religion, was received with 
more enthusiasm by the reactionaries than by the progressists. Nothing 
was done in the direction of decentralization. Instead of discontent coming 
to an end, there were strikes and riots in many places and a terrible massacre 
of Jews at KishinefF in Bessarabia (April 19-20). The removal of Witte 
from the ministry of finance to the uninfluential presidency of the council 
of ministers (in August) marked the triumph of De Plehve and the reaction- 
aries. Then, and until he was murdered (July 28, 1904), the minister of 
the interior (De Plehve) persistently pursued his policy of repression. The 
condition was slightly mitigated under his successor. Prince Sviatopok- 
Mirski, who, however, hampered by the reactionists, felt compelled to 
resign early in February, 1905. Already a reign of disorder had set in, 
worse than that in Morocco. The signal for it had been given on January 
22, when a peaceful demonstration of over a hundred thousand striking 
workingmen in St. Petersburg, petitioning for political as well as economic 
reforms, was fired upon by the soldiery. At least hundreds were killed and 
two or three thousand wounded. Then for eighteen months anarchism, 
industrial and revolutionary socialism, disaffection among the misgoverned 
Poles, Jews, Finns and Armenians, unrest ^mong the peasants, and dis- 
satisfaction among the more enlightened nobles and intellectual classes, 
combined to produce a situation that tested to the utmost the courage, 
wisdom and statesmanship of the government. Swayed alternately by 
conflicting influences, the vacillating czar issued orders one day or week 
only to reverse them the next. Violence and murder continued; there were 
strikes and disorder everywhere; Grand Duke Sergius, governor of Mos- 
cow, was assassinated there (February 17); before summer was spent 
separatist civil war raged in the Caucasus provinces and those along the 
Baltic; and in July a formidable mutiny broke out in the Black Sea fleet 
lying off" Odessa, where a great strike was in progress that culminated in the 
destruction of a large part of the city. Loss of life by suppression of strikes 
was especially heavy in Poland, eight hundred being killed and wounded at 
Warsaw (January 27-30) and fifteen hundred at Lodz (June 23). 

The Constitutional Movement and the Douma. — But amid the 
disorders and disturbances, constitutional agitation for reform, started 
in the zemstvos (provincial councils), made progress. Various plans for a 
national assembly (douma) were suggested, but it was long before an agree- 
ment was reached, Hberalism and reaction being alternately in the ascendant 
with the czar. In April an extension of the zemstvo system was granted, 



7i6 France, Russia, and the Far East 

and a decree announced liberty of worship for all Christians, while on May 
i6 concessions were made to the Jews and Poles. On the other hand Gen- 
eral TrepofF, the "Bloody Sunday" butcher at St. Petersburg, was invested 
(June 4) with quasi-dictatorial powers under the title of under-secretary 
for police. An important congress of zemstvoists met at Moscow on May 5 
and declared unanimously in favor of universal suffrage; and on June 19 
the czar gave audience to a deputation from the zemstvos and doumas 
(municipal councils), when he promised that the elect of the nation should 
be summoned without delay. Various schemes for a national assembly were 
announced and rejected as unsatisfactory by a congress held at Moscow 
(July 19-22), while on August 15 the Peasants' Union demanded universal 
suffrage, legislative powers for the assembly, with control of finance and 
administration, free education, and the distribution among the peasants of 
lands belonging to the Church and the State. On August 19 another 
unsatisfactory plan was announced by the government; it made the suffrage 
extremely limited, and withheld freedom of meeting, of speech, and of the 
press. While the zem.stvoists accepted it as an instalment of liberty, the 
revolutionary and socialist parties scouted it as a mockery and demanded a 
constituent assembly elected by direct and universal suffrage. Then, late 
in October, they organized strikes that stopped railroad communication 
and paralyzed the whole orderly administration of the empire. The influ- 
ence of Count Witte (who had been the chief Russian plenipotentiary at 
the Portsmouth conference) with the czar prevailed. A manifesto promising 
civil liberties and extended powers for the Douma was issued on October 
30, and was foUov^^ed by a partial political amnesty, the resignation of 
reactionary ministers, the appointment of a cabinet under Count Witte's 
premiership, and the restoration of the Finnish constitution (abrogated in 
1899); but terrible disorders and massacres of Jews in the provinces were 
organized by reactionaries in a desperate effort to save the old regime. 
These culminated in a wholesale slaughter at Bielostok in Poland (June 7, 
1906). Following a naval mutiny at Cronstadt (October-November, 1905) 
came an almost successful one at Odessa in December and renewed insur- 
rections in the Baltic provinces and Lithuania, where an ex-minister of 
State, General Sakharof, was murdered. Poland learned that liberty 
proclaimed is not liberty secured. There was a temporary triumph of 
reaction, and on December 26 the meeting of the Douma was postponed. 
Then terrible vengeance was wreaked by a revolutionary outbreak in 
Moscow in December and January, and in the Caucasus and Baltic provinces, 
while martial law was redeclared in Poland. At the end of February an 
imperial ukase announced the meeting of the Douma for May 10, and the 
election of its members began early in March. By the first returns it was 



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KING EDWARD VII. 

King of England and Emperor of India. He succeeded to tlie throne January 
'J.2, 19U1, after tlie deatli of liis motlier, Queen Victoria. 




QUEEN VICTORIA AT BALMORAL. 

This picture, taken October 2, 1899, shows the late beloved Queen of 
England and Empress of India sitting at her table writing letters of sympathy 
to the near relations of those who were killed and wounded in the Boer War. 



France, Russia, and the Far East 717 

thought it would be conservative, but in April a complete change had taken 
place, and it was seen that the Constitutional Democrats would have an 
overwhelming majority. Repression went on and had its inevitable tem- 
pering of assassination. By a so called "fundamental law" the czar practi- 
cally repealed many clauses of the manifesto of October 30, making the 
Douma a consultive, and not a legislative body. Then (May 2) Count 
Witte resigned. 

The Douma^s Brief Career. — On May 10, amid great pomp and 
ceremony, in the presence of the czar and his court, the work of the Douma 
was inaugurated at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. . The hopeful tone 
of the czar's address was not in harmony with the autocratic terms of the 
fundamental law, nor was the spirit of the Douma, as was soon to be seen. 
Evidently he did not appreciate the situation, or could not brook ceasing to 
be an autocrat. Having adjourned to the Tauride Palace and organized 
there, the assembly began to debate on the address in reply to the speech 
from the throne. The demands made in this document as finally amended 
were: General am.nesty, abolition of the death penalty, suspension of 
martial and all exceptional laws, full civil liberty, abolition of the Council 
of the Empire, revision of the fundamental law, establishment of the respon- 
sibility of ministers, right of interpellation, forced expropriation of land, 
guarantee of the rights of trade-unions, no new taxes levied without the 
consent of parliament, budget or taxation projects accepted by parliament 
to have control of all loans. The carrying out of this programme would 
mean full parliamentary government and the overthrow of the bureaucratic 
oligarchy. Therefore the latter left nothing undone to sway the czar to 
their side, and purposely provoked the Douma to violent language. There 
was of course a deadlock, and many were surprised the assembly was per- 
mitted to live so long. The czar dissolved it late on the evening of July 21 
and, as the members had expected this action, it had been arranged to 
reconvene at Viborg in Finland. Fully half of them met there and, before 
being dispersed by the military, (July 23) drew up an address to the Russian 
people in which they state the case as follows: "You elected us as your 
representatives, and instructed us to fight for your country and freedom. 
In execution of your instructions and our duty we drew up laws in order 
to insure freedom to the people. We demanded removal of irresponsible 
ministers, who, infringing the laws with impunity, oppressed freedom. 
First of all, however, we wanted to bring out a law respecting the distribu- 
tion of land to working peasants, and involving the assignment, to this end, 
of the crown appanages, the lands belonging to the clergy, and the com- 
pulsory expropriation of private estates. The government held such a law 



7i8 France, Russia, and the Far East 

inadmissible, and, upon the Douma once more urgently putting forward 
its resolution regarding compulsory expropriation, the Douma was dis- 
solved." As the newspapers were prohibited from publishing this address, 
some time must elapse before it can reach the people by private circulation. 
The czar, of course, made his own statement of the trouble, and promised 
another parliament, elected by universal suffrage, to meet in February, 1907. 
In France, after the States General turned into a Constituent Assembly, 
came the short-lived Legislative Assembly, and then the Convention with 
all its-horrors. What will be the sequence of events in Russia ? 

The Rest of Europe in 1906. — While the future of Russia thus hangs 
in the balance, the prospect of peace in the rest of Europe seems good. The 
Hague Tribunal is, to a certain extent, a guarantee. The origin of that 
court belongs to the irony of history. It was the present czar of Russia who 
issued a call for a conference at The Hague (1899) to consider "the terrible 
and increasing burden of European armaments," and the possibility of 
settling international disputes by arbitration; yet his country and England 
are the only European nations that have since been involved in war, and 
England, since the accession of Edward VII, has become preeminently 
a peacemaker. The emperor of Germany is the stormy petrel of European 
politics west of Russia; but with the other governments united against 
him, he is comparatively powerless for mischief. Its Egyptian interests 
have changed England's attitude towards Turkey, whose barbarism it 
can curb, and whose only friend now is Germany. It has conciliated its 
centuries-old enemy, France, and tried to strengthen it in North Africa. 
Along with the United States it has done much toward making the work 
of the Hague Conference effective by referring disputes to the permanent 
tribunal which came out of that gathering. Italy is enjoying peace. Aus- 
tria and Hungary have just settled their long-standing dispute over their 
financial relations, a dispute that more than once threatened to disrupt the 
Dual monarchy. Another straining of relations in a similar combination 
has ended differently. Norway had been torn from Denmark and, against 
its will, united with Sweden in 1814. It had its own parliament, and ob- 
tained its own seal, flag and governor; and it also wanted to manage its 
own foreign affairs. From 1890 this demand became insistent, and, after 
Sweden's repeated refusal to grant it, Norway's parliament declared the 
union dissolved, and this action was ratified by an almost unanimous 
popular vote (August 14, 1905). Charles of Denmark was chosen king, 
was welcomed to his realm in December, 1905, and crowned as Haakon VII 
at Trondtheim on June 22, 1906. 



CHAPTER XLIII 



Civilization's Greatest Century 



Beginnings of Industrial Revolution. — In the agencies and conven- 
iences of material civilization, as w^ell as in the development of political 
institutions, the past century has seen more progress and improvement than 
any, in many respects than all, of the ages that preceded it. The division 
of historic time into centuries being purely artificial, naturally it has only 
an accidental relation to man's works and marks no interruptions of them. 
Each century, then, is an unbroken continuation of that preceding it, 
and the inventions, discoveries and improvements of one are often the 
result of investigations begun or accidents occurring in that going before. 
The applications of steam and electricity are illustrations of this. In 
no direction has the last period of a hundred years been more prohfic than 
in that of inventions, and the future fame of the nineteenth century is 
likely to be largely based on its immense achievements in this field of 
human activity. It has been great in other directions, — in science, in 
exploration, in political and moral development, — but it is perhaps in 
invention and the industrial adaptation of scientific discovery that it stands 
highest and has done most for the advancement of mankind. Yet for the 
beginnings of the two agencies mentioned above we must go back to the 
eighteenth, to the Scottish engineer James Watt and the American printer, 
writer and statesman, Benjamin Franklin. For the notable invention of the 
steam engine, which forms the foundation stone of the whole immense edifice 
of material progress, as v>^ell as for other agencies, credit must be given 
to Great Britain; but for the fullest development of the work we must seek 
the United States, whose inventive activity and the value of its results 
have surpassed those of any other region of the earth. 

It is not, however, to the discovery, but to the useful application, of 
steam power that Watt's fame is due. The use of steam as a motive power 
had been attempted long before, and steam pumps had been used almost a 
century earlier than the date of his invention (1769). What he did was to 
produce the first effective steam engine, the parent machine upon v/hich the 
multitudinous improvements of later times were based. But while the 

719 



720 Civilization's Greatest Century 

eighteenth century is to be credited with this discovery and with the first 
stages in the production of labor-saving machinery, yet the great triumphs 
in the latter field were achieved in the succeeding century, during which era 
the powers of human production were developed to an extent not only unpre- 
cedented, but almost incredible in advance. The powers of man, aided by 
steam and electricity, were increased a hundredfold during a century and a 
quarter. It would require a large volume devoted to this subject alone to 
tell, even in epitome, all that has been done in this direction. Here, then, we 
must confine ourselves to a rapid review of the leading results of inventive 
genius. Notable triumphs in the invention of labor-saving machines were 
accomplished in the closing period of the eighteenth century. These include 
the famous British inventions of Hargreaves' spinning jenny (about 1765), 
Arkwright's spinning frame (about 1767), and Cartwright's power loom 
(1785), the first notable aids in cotton manufacture. These were made 
more available by the cotton gin of the American inventor Whitney, which 
enormously cheapened the production of cotton fibre. Other celebrated 
American inventors of that period were John Fitch, to whose efforts the 
first practical steamboat was due (1787), and Oliver Evans, who revolution- 
ized milling machinery, his devices in flour and grist mills being in use for 
half a century after his death (1819). He also devised a steam carriage, 
and in 1804 built a steam dredger, which propelled itself through the streets 
of Philadelphia and was afterwards moved as a stern-wheel steamboat on the 
Schuylkill. Another famous invention was Perkins' nail machine patented 
in 1795, but fully developed only fifteen years later. About the same 
time Blanchard made important inventions in woodwork. 

The Steamboat and the Locomotive. — Of the early inventions of 
the nineteenth century, however, the most notable were the steamboat and 
the locomotive, the later development of which has been of extraordinary 
value to mankind. Previous to their advent the horse had been depended on 
for rapid land travel, the sail for rapid motion on the water. Fulton's and 
Stephenson's inventions gradually and in the end almost universally super- 
seded these ancient systems and enabled man to pass rapidly over land and 
sea. The application of steam to the movement of boats had been tried by 
several inventors on the European continent, in England and in America 
before the end of the eighteenth century, the most successful being Fitch's 
already mentioned. But the earliest inventor to produce a commercially 
successful steamboat was Robert Fulton, another American, whose " Cler- 
mont" made its trial trip on the Hudson in i^<^y. This boat, in which was 
employed the principle of the side' paddle-wheel and an engine more pov.er ul 
than Fitch could command, excited very keen public interest, far more than 



Civilization's Greatest Century 721 

had been given to the pioneer steamboat. On Monday, September ii, 
crowds were gathered on the wharf, friends of the inventor feverishly 
anxious lest the enterprise should come to grief, and scoffers ready to give 
vent to shouts of derision. At one o'clock the "Clermont" moved slowly 
out into the stream. Volumes of smoke rushed from her chimney, and her 
uncovered wheels scattered spray far behind her. The sight was certainly 
novel to the people of those days, and some in the crowd were loud in their 
ridicule. It subsided, however, when it was seen that the steamer was 
increasing her speed, making steady progress up the stream. Astonishment 
succeeded incredulity and gave way to undisguised and demonstrative 
delight. But in a little while the boat was seen to stop, enthusiasm sub- 
sided, and the scoffers were again in their glory, unhesitatingly pronouncing 
the enterprise a failure. To their chagrin, however, the steamer soon pro- 
ceeded again on her way, and this time even more rapidly than before. 
Fulton had discovered that the paddles were too long and took too deep 
a hold on the water; so he had stopped the boat to shorten them. Then 
the voyage was continued all day and night without stopping until she 
reached Clermont, and next day went to Albany. She made her return 
trip to New York in thirty hours. Though this speed was but five miles an 
hour, it spread dismay among the owners of sailing vessels. This innova- 
tion gave a powerful impulse to internal commerce, and ere long there 
were steamboats on the Ohio and the Mississippi. So eminent a man as Sir 
Humphrey Davy was not afraid to say that steam navigation across the 
Atlantic was impossible; yet in 1819 a vessel went from Savannah to Liver- 
pool by combined steam and sail in twenty-eight days. The first ship to 
cross entirely by steam power was a Canadian-built vessel, in 1833, and a 
year or two later the first iron ocean steamer made the trip in fifteen days, a 
feat performed nowadays in a little over a third of that time. 

George Stephenson and the Locomotive. — But another application 
of steam has far surpassed the boat in importance. The locomotive and the 
railroad have increased the ease, cheapness and rapidity of land travel 
and freight transportation much more than steam navigation has increased 
traffic by water. Wooden horse tramways had long been in use before the 
first iron rails were laid (in England about 1767). Many had worked on the 
problem of how to replace the horse with the steam carriage on these roads, 
but to George Stephenson, first a fireman and then an engineer in an English 
colliery, belongs the credit of solving the problem satisfactorily. In 18 14 
he constructed a traction engine with two cylinders. This now primitive 
device rested on a boiler mounted on wheels turned by chains connecting 
their axles with the engine. It was a clumsy affair, weak in power and 

46 



722 Civilization's Greatest Century 

inefficient in service (it drew eight loaded cars four miles an hour), and was 
greatly improved upon by his second engine (1815), in which he used the 
steam blast-pipe. So little esteemed were these early engines that ten 
years later only horses were used on the first passenger railroad, the Stock- 
ton-Darlington (England). Though Stephenson kept on making improve- 
ments year by year, yet it was a Frenchman, Seguin, who successfully 
introduced (1826) locomotives with improved appliances for increasing the 
draught. But when the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (begun in 
1825) offered premiums for the best engines to be run at high speed, against 
a number of competitors, Stephenson's "Rocket" was adjudged (1830) the 
most effective locomotive yet produced. It weighed only four and a quarter 
tons, but was able to draw seventeen tons at an average speed of fourteen, 
and a maximum of seventeen, miles an hour — ^when run alone it reached 
thirty. The new idea had by this time taken root in America, where short 
lines of railway for horse traction had been laid at early dates. The first 
locomotive here, the "Stourbridge Lion," imported from England, was 
placed on a short line at Honesdale, Pa., in 1829, and next year the Balti- 
more and Ohio, begun in 1828, became the first passenger railroad in the 
United States. It used the earliest American-built locomotive, the pro- 
duction (at Trenton, N. J.) of Peter Cooper, the famous New York philan- 
thropist of later years. Weighing only two and a-half tons, it would now 
seem a mere toy affair in comparison with the gigantic "steam horses" 
which Philadelphia sends to all parts of the world. Yet it did not lack 
speed, for it ran from Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills, twenty-seven miles, in 
an hour. But a more serviceable locomotive, the "Best Friend," built at 
West Point, N. Y., was run the same year at a speed of thirty miles from 
Charleston to Hamburg, S. C. Compare these beginnings, with less than a 
hundred miles of railroad in the United States at the end of 1831, with the 
present development. And now the steam threatens to be superseded by 
the electric locomotive at no distant day. 

"Harnessing the Lightning" — the Telegraph. — ^The electric tele- 
graph, usually attributed to a native of Massachusetts, Samuel F. B. Morse, 
should really be credited to the labors of several scientists, both in Europe 
and America. In England Bishop Watson had shown (1747) that signals 
might be sent by discharging a Leyden jar through a wire; and six years 
later an anonymous writer expressed in Edinburg the idea of signaling by 
electric discharges. Lesage (1774) erected a telegraph line at Geneva with 
a wire for each letter. The same year Reusser in Germany proposed a 
variation on this plan. Volta's discovery of the electric pile (1800), and 
Oersted's of electro-magnetism (1819), afforded much greater facilities for 



Civilization's Greatest Century 723 

transmitting signals to a distance. Ampere (1820) applied Oersted's 
discovery to Lesage's system, and in 1832 Baron Schilling exhibited in 
Russia a telegraph model with a single needle giving the signals. Weber 
and Gauss carried out this plan the next year at the Goettingen observatory. 
Then the subject w^as taken up by Steinheil of Munich, whose inventions 
contributed more, perhaps, than those of any other individual to render 
electric telegraphs commercially practicable. He was the first to show that 
earth connections might be made to supersede a return wire. Morse's 
merit lay, then, not in the discovery of the principle of electric telegraphy, but 
in his simplified telegraphic alphabet, which has driven out nearly all other 
devices and made its way throughout the world. About 1837 electric 
telegraphs were first established as commercial speculations in three different 
countries. Steinheil's system was carried out at Munich, Morse's in 
America, and Wheatstone and Cooke's in England. The first telegraphs 
ever constructed for commercial use were laid down on the London and 
Birmingham and the Great Western Railways, with underground wires; 
but the cost of this plan soon led to its rejection. Morse's first line, com- 
pleted in 1844, was the pioneer of a development analogous to that of the 
railroad. To-day the telegraph runs over all continents and under almost 
all seas. There are ten submarine telegraph cables under the North 
Atlantic Ocean, where the first successful one was laid in 1866. Among 
later improvements in electric telegraphy the most important are those by 
which a wire maybe used for more than one message at a time. In 1872 a 
workable method of sending simultaneously two messages in opposite 
directions on the same line was introduced, and it was also discovered that 
two messages might be sent in the same direction. The two plans combined 
formed quadruplex telegraphy, by which the message-carrying power of 
the wires has been greatly multiplied. In 1897 Guglielmo Marconi, acting 
on a principle laid down by a Frenchman (Branly), discovered wireless 
telegraphy, which has since been adopted for transmitting messages from 
mid-ocean. It is also to some extent used on land. 



Other Applications of Electricity. — The steam railroad has been 
supplemented, and promises to be superseded, by electricity as a motive 
power. First came the electric street railway, which has entirely sup- 
planted the horse-car in every American city but New York, and, in addition 
now forms a network of communications between cities and towns all over 
the country. Passenger travel in cities by aid of the horse railway was 
inaugurated about the middle of the last century. The horse began to be 
replaced by the electric motor in 1881, when the first railway of this character 



724 Civilization's Greatest Century 

was laid in Berlin. The second was laid in Ireland, near the Giants' 
Causeway, in 1883. But the electric railway has made its greatest progress 
in the United States, where the first line went into operation at Richmond, 
Va,, in 1888. It adopted the overhead trolley system, since so widely 
employed, especially on the rural electric lines. The sub-surface trolley 
has been in successful operation in the borough of Manhattan for some 
years, and will probably be forced on other cities. Electric locomotives 
are also in use, especially on the elevated and tunnel railroads of our large 
cities. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad has had a very large one in ser- 
vice for some years, and the New York Central and Hudson River has 
begun a gradual equipment of its whole system with it. Experiments with 
such an engine made at Berlin in 1905 developed a speed of over a hundred 
miles an hour. The motive power of electricity has also been applied to the 
running of manufacturing establishments and even sewing machines. Two 
applications of it of the greatest utility have yet to be mentioned, namely, 
illumination and the transmission of sound. The practical application of 
coal gas as an illuminant is due to William Murdoch, a Scotchman, who 
lighted his own house and offices with it (1792), and then refused to take out 
a patent for so great a boon to the public. But, wonderful as this light was 
long regarded, it has been far outdone by that from electricity. This 
method of lighting, long ago suggested by many scientists, first appeared in 
Paris for commercial uses (in the Avenue de I'Opera) a few years previous 
to the Paris Electrical Exhibition of 1881. It was in 1876 that it was 
invented by JablochkofF, a Russian scientist, who overcame the difficulties 
connected with electric light as previously known. A little later the subject 
was taken up in the United States by the "Wizard of Menlo Park," who 
has given us besides, the Edison system of lighting and, who, since his 
invention of an automatic telegraph repeater (1863), has devised so many 
utilities and diversions in the electrical line. As early as i860 the idea of the 
telephone began to be entertained by men of science; but the first great 
step in advance was made in 1876, when Professor Graham Bell discovered 
electricity's power to convey speech, and that discovery he has perpetuated 
in the telephone, one of the greatest conveniences of life in our day. This 
wonderful time-saver soon found its way all over the civilized world, but, 
like all other electrical appliances, it has made greatest strides in this 
country. 

Revolution in the Steel and Other Industries. — The so called 
Bessemer process of making steel in England dates from 1856; but it was 
only an adaptation of an accidental American invention at the Eddyville 
(Ky.) iron works of William Kelley, an Irish-American native of Pittsburg, 



Civilization's Greatest Century 725 

Pa., to whom it came like an inspiration about 1850. Steel was then an 
expensive commodity, a luxury; but since then more progress has been 
made than in all the preceding ages. Steel is now cheaper than iron was 
forty years ago, and in the last thirty years more iron and steel have been 
turned out, the world over, than was produced in all the previous centuries 
of known history. In an almost incredibly short time Pittsburg has become 
the greatest centre of iron and steel production in the world, in which the 
biggest business fact is the United States Steel Corporation. "It has more 
stockholders," says Mr. Herbert N. Casson, "than the population of 
Nevada; more employees than there are voters in Maine; more profits, in 
a good year, than a revenue of the city of New York. Above all ordinary 
corporations it towers like the Great Pyramid of Cheops above the sand 
mounds of the desert. Yet, vast as it is, it represents less than two-thirds 
of the American iron and steel industry. It would be a two billion corporation 
if it included the whole trade." But while this has been the greatest, it has 
by no means been the only industrial revolution. The passing craze of the 
bicycle and the current "fad" of the population-reducing automobile have 
no place here; but the revolution in industry, with its inevitable disturbance 
of the condition of those wedded to the old methods, belongs to history. 
The "Song of the Shirt" has been relegated to ancient history by the pro- 
gress made in the use of the sewing machine since Elias Howe patented 
the first comparatively crude model in 1846. Another American invention 
of the greatest utihty is that of vulcanized India-rubber, discovered by 
Charles Goodyear in 1839. But in no field of effort have inventors been 
more active or their results more useful than in the production of labor- 
saving devices in agriculture. Who can fail to appreciate the progress 
from the old-time plough, spade, sickle, scythe and hand-garnering of the 
harvest to the present implements that have so enormously increased the 
working power of the farmer .? The new agricultural machines — seeders, 
planters, cultivators, reapers and mowers, harvesters and binders, hay 
tedders and loaders, potato and rock diggers, corn buskers and shellers, 
cotton pickers, and countless other labor-saving tools and devices — by 
greatly cheapening all food products, have probably had a wider influence 
than any other group of American inventions. 



OCT 24 1906 




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